


might never be normal again (but who cares)

by napricot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, De-Serumed Steve Rogers, First Time, Fix-It, Goats, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Pining, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Retirement, Slow Burn, Steve's Slow Motion Midlife Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-01-22 23:00:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18537223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: The beginnings of a plan took shape in Steve’s mind, as clear and simple as a tactical frontal assault. He’d prove to Bucky that this was it, he was staying: Steve was retired from the fighting game, Steve wasn’t going to let anything keep pulling them apart. Maybe then when Steve finally told him he loved him, Bucky would believe him.All things considered, Steve thought he’d handled the whole Thanos killing half the universe thing and the ensuing bitter, desperate quest to defeat him pretty well. Sacrificing his super soldier serum to use one of the Infinity Stones wasn't a problem either, not when it meant getting back the half of the universe they'd lost, and especially not when it meant getting Bucky back. But retirement and finally confessing his feelings for Bucky? Those were proving to be more challenging.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Frightened Rabbit's "Home From War."
> 
> No Avengers: Endgame spoilers here! Just me frantically trying to finish this before I see Endgame on the 27th! lol pray for me. In all seriousness, this is 3/4 done, I'm just racing the clock to get it all posted before Endgame thoroughly josses me and probably breaks my heart. As it is, this fic is only canon compliant through Infinity War, I started this way before even seeing any promo material for Endgame.

All things considered, Steve thought he’d handled the whole Thanos killing half the universe thing and the ensuing bitter, desperate quest to defeat him pretty well. Had he gone catatonic for a while after Bucky and most everyone else he loved had turned to dust? Yes. Had he, perhaps, come up with some terrible, suicidal plans for killing Thanos? Also yes. But Steve maintained that all of that was a pretty normal and rational response to utterly incomprehensible circumstances. Sam would have agreed with him, he was sure. _Unhealthy coping mechanisms are better than nothing. In the short term, anyway_ , Sam would have said, probably. And really, at least Steve had been mostly functional after the first, rapid trip through the stages of grief had passed.

Ha. _Stages_. As if grief was a neat line with a defined endpoint. It was a circle, like the round face of a compass, and Steve was the needle swinging wildly between its cardinal directions: now depression, then anger, and bargaining, then back to denial, then a brief, unbearable stop at acceptance before swinging right back to anger again.

Anyway, Steve thought he’d handled it all pretty well. He’d gotten back up again, after all, just like his Ma had always told him to: _you always get up, Steven_.

So he’d gotten up off the floor of the jungle where Bucky had—where Bucky—where he’d held the last pieces he could of him and he’d—

He’d gotten up again, after that. So he could get back up after anything.

“I’m fine,” he always told Natasha, though she never seemed to believe him. She hadn’t believed him in that jungle, and she hadn’t believed him when he told her again before they started on this insane quest to travel all over time and space to snatch the Infinity Stones back from Thanos.

“No, you’re not. Literally no one is fine. You could just admit it, Rogers.”

“He’s fine,” Thor had said. “Just like me! We’re both _fine_.”

They’d tried to smile at Natasha reassuringly, and she’d recoiled.

“You two are the least fine people I have literally ever seen, and I have seen people turn to actual ash.”

Then it had been Steve’s turn to flinch and recoil. “Too soon, Natasha.”

“We all have coping mechanisms,” she’d snapped. “You have denial, I have gallows humor.”

Whatever Natasha thought of his and Thor’s coping mechanisms, they’d worked. Steve had pushed through and fought and stayed standing and fought some more, alone and with his team, until it was just him and an Infinity Stone, asking him what price he would pay to use it, to undo all of Thanos’s evil.

Good thing he had experience with the bargaining stage of grief. He’d spent a not insignificant portion of the five and a half months it had taken to get them here bargaining with a silent, half-empty universe. Now he had the Gauntlet on his hand, the red of the Power Stone on the rightmost knuckle glinting back at him with what he suspected might be malevolence, and he was ready to bargain with the universe again. The Power Stone seemed to pulse with a question. _What would you give, to undo the Mad Titan’s madness?_

He wanted to tell the Power Stone _anything_ , _I’d give anything_ , but some last spark of self-preservation, of hope, of not giving up, didn’t let him. So he said _whatever it takes_ , instead. A vague, alien sense of approval pulsed forth from the Power Stone and the Gauntlet, and then pain overtook him, pain like being in the Vita-Ray chamber again, all-consuming and total, so much that he stopped being Steve and started being a nameless screaming thing made of pain and he wondered if this was the price, an eternity of this—

Then it stopped.

* * *

When he came to, he felt strange. 

“Steve,” he heard Natasha say, her voice even but urgent, and strangely muffled.

He opened his eyes to her face hovering over him, and even that was strange, because her eyes weren’t their usual, muted green. Instead, they were flat grey. He brought his hand up to his face, and then he knew. His wrist was bird-boned again, fragile compared to his big, blunt hands. _You’re meant to be taller_ , Bucky used to say, pressing his palm flat against Steve’s, Steve’s fingers only a little shorter than the span of Bucky’s own elegant, long fingers.

So this was the price the Power Stone had demanded.

He was small and skinny again, all the gifts of the super soldier serum gone. He didn’t even have to look at himself more to know. He felt it, familiar still, after all this time: aching back, lungs and heart that strained and struggled, a bad ear, some of the universe’s colors turned dull and muddy.

Steve sat up, wincing at the way his back cracked and popped. Natasha watched him keenly, lifted her eyebrows up a bare fraction of an inch. _Okay?_ He nodded, and she helped him up. They were of a height now.

“Cap,” said Tony, horror making his voice raw and his eyes huge. Looking at him now, Steve felt a jolt of surprise.

He looked so much older. Steve had scarcely noticed, he’d been so focused on their impossible mission, but of course Tony looked older. He had lived longer than any of them after Thanos snapped his fingers, bouncing through time on a wild and dangerous, infinitesimal hope that had only barely been possible thanks to Scott Lang, and Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne’s technology. Tony still stood straight-backed, but his hair and beard were white now, and there were new deep lines carved into his face.

Steve looked back down at his wrists, at the Gauntlet that was already slipping off his hand, and up at Tony, and felt a rush of dizzy vertigo. It seemed the Stones exacted a cost from everyone, one way or the other.

“Cap, what did you _do_ , are you—”

“I didn’t make him smaller,” blurted out Lang, wide-eyed.

The Gauntlet and its Infinity Stone finally slipped off of Steve’s hand to land on the bare soil of Titan with a soft thud. Steve looked around and up: Titan was still long-dead by Thanos’s hand, but its once-ruined moon was whole again. Maybe it had worked, then. It had to have worked. If he’d paid the price, it had to have worked.

Somewhat belatedly, Steve said, “I’m fine,” like he always did, then took off his tac gear without really looking at any of the rest of the team.

The gear was just weighing him down too much now. As it was, he was swimming in the t-shirt underneath the body armor, and his pants were nearly falling off. Thor picked up the Infinity Stone and Gauntlet, and set the Power Stone in the containment device Shuri had devised. Almost done. Just the Soul Stone left to use and contain.

Steve tightened his belt and the shield harness, set the shield on his back again. His lungs were already registering their unhappiness with all the dust of ruined Titan, and his crooked spine creaked under the weight of the shield as he settled it on his back.

He was so fucking tired. Just a little longer now though, one way or another.

“So, uh, where the hell did the rest of you go?” Rocket asked Steve.

“Cap small?” said the Hulk, crouching down to look at him more closely. “Like when Hulk become small Bruce?”

Steve smiled up at Hulk. “Yeah, buddy. Kinda.”

“ _Too_ small,” grumbled Hulk with disapproval, and a tiny part of Steve agreed.

He’d always known there’d be a price to fix this. They’d all known. If not to use each of the Stones, then to win this war, at least. He’d been ready to pay with his life. Paying with his super-serum provided body was a bargain so big it was nearly a theft. And there was still more than enough time for this war to take its final price.

“Let’s finish this,” Steve said.

Natasha, bless her, didn’t miss a beat. She unstrapped a couple of her knives, and one of her guns, tossed them to Steve.

“Let’s go kill Thanos.”

Everyone readied their weapons and headed towards Thanos’ last known location in grim silence, until Natasha murmured, “Danvers is in position, she has eyes on him.”

Thor swung his ax in a tense circle, letting lightning build up with each complete arc. “This time, I will cut off his hand first. Just in case,” he said grimly.

“Yeah, good plan, we’ve got this, team—hey, where’s Nebula?” asked Tony. “Goddammit, I _told_ her we weren’t splitting up—”

When they found Nebula, she was standing over Thanos’ massive body, both of them unmoving, while Danvers literally hovered nearby.

“Nebula had some...stuff to work out with her dad? I let her do her thing,” said Danvers with a shrug.

That hadn’t been part of the plan, but if Nebula had managed it on her own, Steve wasn’t complaining. The Hulk was: he grumbled and growled, taking a few tentative steps toward Thanos’s body, as if ready to smash at the slightest sign of movement.

“What did we say about splitting up on Titan?” asked Tony, aggrieved. “Because I distinctly recall saying only Danvers was supposed to peel off to be the secret weapon!”

“Shaddup, she got the job done, didn’t she?” said Rocket, and hopped down off Thor’s shoulder to approach Nebula, his rifle pointed cautiously at Thanos’ body. Steve would never, ever get used to the sight of a raccoon carrying an enormous rifle, much less talking. “You got the job done, _right_?”

Nebula stood still and silent. Her eyes were fixed on Thanos. Just as Steve started to worry that there was something wrong with her, she opened her clenched fist to reveal the final, amber orange Infinity Stone, the only one they hadn’t been able to retrieve themselves: the Soul Stone.

“The soul of the Mad Titan for the souls of trillions,” she said.

The Infinity Stone flickered, as if in acquiescence.

“Nebula?” asked Tony, stepping towards her. “You okay?”

“Is it done? Did you do it?” she asked in her odd, rasping metallic voice, as hard to read as ever.

“Yes,” answered Thor. “We have the rest of the Stones. What we could restore, we have restored. If he is truly dead, it should all—”

Nebula closed her fist around the Stone again, and before Steve could even wonder what she was about to do with it, if things were about to get worse, as if there could possibly be a worse, Thanos turned to ash and dust.

“So…definitely dead, then,” remarked Tony.

Steve didn’t think what happened next was fully comprehensible, not to human senses anyway. To him, it felt as if the entirety of existence paused, but not like time had frozen—Steve knew what that felt like by now, thanks to the Time Stone. It felt instead as if, for a moment, time didn’t exist at all. Then reality stuttered back into its normal flow with a nearly palpable _click_. Thor staggered and swayed on his feet as Danvers dropped back down to the ground, and Rocket covered his ears.

_Something_ had happened, but Steve didn’t know what. He and Natasha scanned the skyline and the blasted surroundings, in case some other change became evident.

“What just happened? Did I blink and miss a flash of light or something?” asked Lang, looking around wildly.

“There’s more noise,” murmured Natasha. “Can you hear it?”

Steve was back to having 1.5 working ears at best, so no, he couldn’t.

The Hulk shook his head, smacked at his ears. “Hulk hear it too,” he said, then shuddered and shrank, leaving behind an equally nervous and confused Bruce.

“Give me the Stone, quickly now,” said Thor, and Nebula tossed it into the containment unit.

“My sister will want to destroy that,” she said. Her patchwork face and black eyes were usually blankly forbidding, but just now, triumph beamed out of her from her shining eyes to her newly loose-limbed stance.

“Hell yeah she will,” said Rocket.

Bruce ambled close to the pile of ash that used to be Thanos and poked at it with his foot. Tony hissed in disapproval, but he crept close too, then kneeled down to touch it with an armored finger. Steve stayed the hell away. He didn’t want to get killed by Thanos-dust triggering an asthma attack. Talk about an undignified death. Having evidently received sufficient physical evidence of Thanos being dead, or at least enough evidence of his body being ashes, Tony and Bruce backed away from the pile of dust that was now stirring gently in the faint breeze.

“So? Is that it? Did we do it?” asked Natasha. Her tone was brisk and even, as if failure would be a minor inconvenience at best.

Which was good, because one of them would have to keep it together if this didn’t work, and Steve was decidedly not _it_ in the game that was Avengers’ Sanity Tag. If they’d managed to get all the damned Infinity Stones and kill Thanos, but still didn’t have half the universe back, then none of the rest of it was worth anything at all.

Before Steve could attempt to say something even mildly morale-boosting, much less _not it_ , a small, confused voice said, “Mr. Stark?” and Tony closed his eyes while the rest of them looked for the source of the voice. Tony’s armored hand came up to cover his mouth, keeping some awful sound of distress in.

“Did the rest of you hear that, tell me you heard that,” pleaded Tony.

“We heard it,” said Natasha, and then Steve spotted him.

The Parker kid had appeared as if from nowhere, looking wide-eyed and bewildered, but happy. Maybe they’d done it. Maybe—

“Yeah, Tony,” said Steve. “He’s back.”

Tony opened his eyes and took heavy steps toward the kid, as if he still wasn’t sure he was real, but Parker closed the gap quickly, running to grip Tony tight in spite of the Iron Man armor between them. More people started appearing, most of them not human. They were whooping in victory, and Rocket ran over to them, leaping from person to person. Some tall guy in a cape appeared. Steve didn’t know any of them, didn’t especially care.

Galaxies away from here, Bucky had re-appeared in the Wakandan jungle, along with Sam, and Wanda, and T’Challa. God, please, let Bucky have reappeared.

Steve’s chest felt tight, and he pressed a hand to it, coughed. The last thing he needed right now was an asthma attack. He kept his breathing as slow and even as he could, even as his heart raced and skipped in its old faulty rhythm.

“What happened?” asked Parker, clinging to Tony. “What did you guys _do_?”

“What was necessary,” said Thor, and dropped the containment box that held the Stones. When it fell, the ground shook.

Even relieved of the weight, Thor sagged. He’d paid his own price for this victory, more than any of them. The Asgardians murdered by Thanos hadn’t been killed by the Infinity Stones. They couldn’t be brought back without a paradox tearing the universe apart. Compared to that, Steve got off lightly, Steve’s life was an outright miracle.

_I’m fine_ , he told himself, as he dragged in another burning, wheezing breath. _I’ll be fine, so long as Bucky and the others are okay_. 

* * *

To get them all here on Titan to confront Thanos, Tony and Thor had used the recovered Time and Reality Stones to rewind time to just a couple days after the initial cataclysm: long enough to ensure Tony and Nebula couldn’t possibly run into themselves, but not so long that Thanos left Titan. Now that they’d succeeded, Tony suggested rewinding it even more, because a couple days with half the universe’s population disappeared still seemed pretty bad, but Dr. Strange, who was apparently a literal sorcerer, refused.

Steve really, really missed when all his problems were about Nazis. Even Schmidt ripping off his entire face seemed downright normal and unremarkable compared to this new level of weirdness.

Strange and Tony got into it a little bit debating the issue, but Steve, frankly, didn’t care, and neither did anyone else judging by the variously wild-eyed or overwhelmed expressions on everyone’s faces as they headed back to their spaceships, or in the case of the Guardians, as they argued about whether to go to Earth first to get Groot, or go to Vormir to get Nebula’s sister.

“I’m just saying, if we roll the timeline back to even six hours post-Snapture—” tried Tony, but this time Lang interrupted him.

“No more messing around with time,” moaned Lang. “I’m honestly surprised you haven’t poofed out of existence just using the quantum realm to go get the Time Stone in the first place.”

“Have we caused a horrible time paradox or not?” asked Bruce.

“No, the moment you first recovered the Time Stone and began using it to fetch the other Stones, you created an entirely new timeline,” said Dr. Strange. “Now that we have all the Stones and Thanos is dead, the old one is being destroyed and overwritten as we speak.”

“That’s why you gave up the Time Stone in the first place. It was the loop hole, the escape hatch,” said Tony, as if to himself. Strange nodded.

“Only those of us who were involved in the timeline’s creation, or outside of this realm’s time entirely in the Soul Stone, will know anything has been overwritten at all. And our work wresting control of the Soul Stone from Thanos from within is what allowed all of you to get the rest of the Stones in the first place. It is an _incredibly_ delicate balance, a one in 30 million timelines sort of balance, which is _why_ —”

“Lang’s right, no more messing around with time,” said Steve. Strange scowled at him for interrupting, but Steve didn’t care. He wanted to be back on Earth five minutes ago and Strange and Tony’s arguing wasn’t helping. “Tony, we are not pushing our luck, not with literally half of the universe on the line.”

“The _entire_ universe,” said Lang. “If we fuck it up, it could all just collapse in one giant paradox and then we’ll have never existed at all!”

Lang bent over and started breathing heavily, one hand clutching at his hair. Bruce started patting him on the back.

“Hey, it’s okay Scott, we’re not gonna...not exist.”

“I feel like we’re on a roll though! And we can do better, we have the Stones, we can—” tried Tony, only to be cut off by a groan of alarm from Lang.

“You’re sounding like a supervillain,” said Natasha coolly.

“No I’m not!”

“Uh, you kind of are, Mr. Stark,” said Parker.

“Stark, if it could all be safely undone, do you doubt that I would do it? I, who have lost so much?” Thor shook his head. “No. We’ve gambled enough with the fate of the universe as it is. I would not like to lose the next round.”

That at least seemed to make an impression on Tony. He swallowed hard, and his mouth twisted, but before he could say anything, Natasha cut him off.

“I just want to remind you what happened the other time you messed around with an Infinity Stone. Do you want to end up with Ultron again? Because that’s how you end up with Ultron.”

“Never gonna let me live that one down, huh?” asked Tony as he glared at Natasha.

“Uh, no, we’re not,” said Steve at the same time Thor said, “No, not really.”

Tony sighed and barked out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, okay, fair enough. No more using the Time Stone.”

And with that, all that was left was to take care of the Infinity Stones and get back to Earth.

Thor, Danvers, and Dr. Strange handled the Stones, something about taking them to a pocket universe where they could be safely destroyed or contained.

“I know a Flerken who can help,” said Danvers, and Steve felt like maybe he should be concerned about the sly curve of her smile at that, but she probably knew what she was doing, so he decided not to worry about it.

The rest of them headed for Earth in a somewhat ramshackle space caravan of multiple spaceships, the Guardians in one, the Avengers in another scavenged from Thanos’s fleet, and still another with the surviving Asgardians, summoned by Thor.

“How long to get back to Earth?” asked Natasha.

“Couple days? I’d rather not blow us up on the way back,” said Tony. He was already fiddling with mysterious dials and displays. Nebula slapped his hands away and tapped out commands, pushed buttons.

“There. I’ve set your course. It will take three standards if you use these jump points. Unless you’re about to crash into something, do not touch the controls,” she said.

“You’re not coming with us?” asked Tony.

“I am going to find my sister,” she said.

Tony cleared his throat and flipped a dial on the cockpit back and forth until Nebula glared pointedly.

“You can, uh, come back to Earth after that, if you, I mean, the raccoon said the Guardians would stick around on Earth for a bit, so—”

“I will bring Gamora to Earth,” she said, as if it were obvious, and left without another word.

* * *

Steve wanted to be back on Earth right the fuck now. They could be, if they used the Infinity Stone that used to be the Tesseract. But that would be tempting fate into some new disaster. Steve could wait a couple days. He could. But god, what if Bucky hadn’t made it? What if something had happened to the others, what if something else was going wrong on Earth _right now_ —

If Bucky hadn’t made it, Steve wasn’t going to make it either. He just wasn’t. He could feel it in his frantic heart, his straining lungs. This body wasn’t made for losing Bucky, it could not weather that blow and survive.

“You okay, Steve?” asked Natasha as they buckled in for takeoff in the ship’s dark and ugly cockpit.

“I’m fine,” he said, and she sighed.

“I can literally hear your lungs rattle,” said Tony.

“Yeah, they do that, don’t worry about it.”

Tony and Bruce exchanged a concerned look. “We can fix this, Steve. Me and Bruce, we can figure something out, get you back to your super-serumed up self—”

“Thank you, but no.”

“I’m sure we have some of your blood banked still, we can—” tried Bruce.

“I said _no_ ,” snapped Steve. “For god’s sake, how much grief could’ve been avoided if everyone had just left the goddamn serum alone? Haven’t you two learned anything? No. No experiments, no fixing this. I got by just fine like this before.”

He’d had Bucky, before. So he’d been just fine. He had Bucky again now, hopefully. _Even when I had nothing_ —

His heart skipped a beat, that old familiar, hummingbird-fast stutter, and he remembered what it meant to pray. _Please_ , he thought, though at this point, his faith that anything was out there to hear or answer him was nothing more than a distant, long-delayed echo of a belief he no longer had.

After a too-long beat of silence, Tony said, “Okay,” and held up his hands. “We hear you. No serum.”

Steve stared Tony and Bruce down, searching for any hint of a lie, and only saw concern.

“Just—tell us if you feel sick or anything?” asked Bruce. “We haven’t exactly got a med bay, but I can figure something out, and we’d really prefer you not keel over and die now, after everything.”

Natasha, as ever, played dirty. “Yeah, I’m guessing Barnes would be pretty upset if we got back and had to tell him, ‘oh, Steve made it through the battle but then he got an asthma attack and died.’”

“I’ll tell you if I start feeling bad, okay? But I made it through basic training like this, I’m not gonna keel over and die all of a sudden now.” Probably. Hopefully. Lang gave him a gentle poke, and Steve jumped. “What the hell, Lang!”

“Just making sure you’re still solid.”

Steve was really never gonna understand this guy.

“I’m still solid,” Steve told Lang, then he turned to Bruce and Tony. The open worry on Tony’s face was etched so much deeper with the new lines there. “Really, I don’t feel sick. I’m fine.”

That wasn’t entirely true. He was back to his old baseline of feeling mildly terrible most of the time, but long experience told Steve that was nothing to worry about. What Steve really felt though, worse than any ulcer or infection or asthma attack, were the hope and grief fighting each other inside him. Bucky, Sam, Wanda, T’Challa, everyone else—they had to be back. His ma had told him to always get back up, but if they weren’t back, safe and whole, then Steve wouldn’t, he couldn’t get back up again to take another swing at life. They had to be back.

* * *

Once they were safely underway towards Earth, and after they gave him a highly condensed and edited version of their efforts to get the Infinity Stones back and defeat Thanos, Parker told them some of what had happened in the odd world of the Soul Stone. Thanos, it turned out, hadn’t exactly killed everyone: he hadn’t been specific enough in his orders to the Soul Stone. He’d simply shifted them out of reality somehow.

“Everything was really confusing in there, and it was just—really weird. Kinda scary. I couldn’t tell how much time was passing or anything, and it was kind of like being in a dream, you know? But Sergeant Barnes found me, so I was okay!”

“Bucky? You were with Bucky?” asked Steve. Hope sloshed uncomfortably against the persistent, furious grief inside him.

“Yeah! He was really nice. And he was good at getting around in there, I don’t know how, he did, like, some cool Inception-style stuff. We found King T’Challa, and Mr. Falcon, and Ms. Scarlet Witch, and, oh, Dr. Strange! And the tree, Groot, and his friends the Guardians! And they all started trying to find a way to bust us out, I don’t know how. Sergeant Barnes told me and Groot to just sit tight and let them handle it, ‘cause we’re just kids. Groot didn’t like that, and I told Sergeant Barnes I wanted to help and that Mr. Stark had made me an Avenger and everything, but I mean, Groot’s a tree and I’ve got spider powers, and none of that was super useful for whatever magic stuff Dr. Strange and Ms. Scarlet Witch were doing.”

For a second, everyone just blinked as they tried to sift out the relevant information from that torrent of speech.

“I’m sure she told you to call her Wanda,” said Natasha, amused.

“I didn’t want to be rude,” said Parker, looking both abashed and starry-eyed. Steve exchanged a knowing glance with Natasha: crush or hero worship, it was cute as hell.

Before Natasha could tease the kid or Steve could ask for more details, Tony said, “Wait a sec, rewind a bit. Barnes. _Barnes_ looked after you.”

Tony’s flat and disbelieving tone made Steve’s hackles rise.

Of course Bucky had looked after Parker. Steve barely knew the kid, but even he could tell Parker needed some looking after. And god knew Bucky could never resist a stray in need of help, much less any wide-eyed kid in over his head on a battlefield he hadn’t asked for. Maybe Tony couldn’t see past the Winter Soldier to who Bucky really was, but he was going to have to try if their tentative detente about everything that had happened in Siberia was going to stick. Because if Tony was going to turn around and try to kill Bucky again, Steve would fucking fight him, with or without the super soldier serum.

“I didn’t need looking after!” objected Parker, oblivious to the rising tension. “But, uh, I maybe kind of freaked out at first? And it was, you know, all real weird, so he kept an eye on me. Offered some hugs. He’s a really good hugger.”

“Yeah, he is,” said Steve, and tried not to be jealous of a probably-traumatized teenager. It had been five months, seventeen days, and about twenty hours since Steve had last hugged Bucky or been hugged by him. Which was really pretty unacceptable.

“Of course he’s a good hugger. Winter Soldier, known for his hugs. Sure,” said Tony.

“Tony—” Steve started, but Tony cut him off with a waved hand.

“Yeah, whatever, I know. He’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. I get it, we’re good. Stop—why are you looking at me like that? Stop glaring, Jesus. It’s like being menaced by a chihuahua. For fuck’s sake, Rogers, I’m not gonna—the hatchet is officially buried, okay? The water is all under the bridge, even if it did, in fact, flood the fucking the bridge—”

Steve snorted, but relaxed his clenched fists and tight shoulders, and let it go. “Okay. We’re good.”

Tony nodded and checked on some readings in the cockpit. “Yep, we’re good, we’re great.”

Steve studied Tony: the white of his beard, the new, deep grooves on his face carved by time and hardship.

“Thank you, Tony. For—for everything you’ve done. For us, for everyone.”

Tony’s allergy to sincerity aside, Steve couldn’t leave it unsaid, not after the last few months, and how much longer those months had been for Tony as he’d bounced through the indescribable quantum realm and the past, tweaking this or that to get them the Stones. Steve half expected some flippant comment in response, but Tony’s dark eyes were bright and serious.

“You too. I wouldn’t have asked you to pay this price, you know. None of us would have.”

“It’s more than worth it. And you know, one of the first things Bucky asked when he saw me as Captain America was ‘is it permanent?’ I told him ‘so far.’” Steve shrugged. “Got me far enough. Not surprised there was a limit.”

* * *

Venturing beyond the cockpit and cargo/weapons bay in Thanos’s ship wasn’t a prospect that excited any of them, but they needed to find somewhere with enough room to bunk down, so Steve and Natasha left the relative safety of the cockpit and started poking around carefully for any likely spots.

“Why is this whole ship designed like a nightmare? Don’t even slavering aliens need quarters, or barracks? Or hell, I’d even take a mess hall,” griped Steve after the fifth room they checked yielded nothing but some new disturbing discovery.

“Thanos didn’t seem like the kind of guy concerned with his armies’ comfort. C’mon, my money’s on quarters being one level down from here.”

Natasha was right, as usual. Of course, what passed for barracks for Thanos’ Outriders weren’t comfortable for humans: the barracks were just a long, wide room full of eerie, empty biomechanical pods. Still, there was clear floorspace for their bedrolls and no readily apparent biohazards or weapons that could go off, so it would do. Steve radioed the others to let them know, then he and Natasha set up camp. They’d slept in worse places. At least they’d be dry here.

Before getting their bedrolls situated, Steve set the shield down in easy reach. Who knew if he could still wield the thing with any force or accuracy, but it was better than nothing in case there were any nasty surprises in here. Natasha’s lips twitched into a smile as she unzipped her own bedroll.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like a turtle now when the shield’s on your back.”

Steve laughed ruefully. He kind of felt like one when the shield was on his narrow again shoulders. “Yeah, I bet.”

They settled down facing each other, like they usually did. Steve had her back, Natasha had his, and she only kicked a little in her sleep. Bunking together was nothing new for them: two years on the run together had stripped away the awkwardness and novelty of it, and left only the comfort. 

Well, it usually left the comfort. Just now, Natasha was staring at him with an intent and scouring kind of examination that left him feeling pretty damned uncomfortable. Being back in his old body shouldn’t have made such a big difference, but it was as if he was meeting her all over again now. _Hey, I’m Steve Rogers—the real Steve Rogers, not that Captain Rogers guy. Nice to meet you._ He thought maybe he was more bare to her now than he had ever been before: the truth of him finally revealed.

“So. This is me,” he told her, when her gaze showed no sign of wavering. Cold tendrils of doubt and worry began to creep over him. She didn’t think he was a stranger to her now, did she?

Finally, she tapped his nose on the crooked spot that had never healed up right after one alley brawl or another, not before or after the serum. Her face relaxed into a smile, the furrow on her forehead smoothing out and the dimples on her cheeks appearing instead.

“Yeah. Yeah, it really is, isn’t it?” she said, and Steve smiled back at her, relieved. “So. What next?”

“We get back to Earth.”

“And then? You told Tony and Bruce there’s no fixing this.”

“Can’t think past then,” said Steve, and Natasha shook her head.

They’d never seen eye to eye on this. Natasha always wanted to cover every scenario, run through every possibility, every likely choice. She wanted to push weak spots to the breaking point in advance, wanted to know the exact shape and scope of every worst case scenario. Beyond the requisite allowances for basic safety and reality checks, Steve thought it was wasted energy, and preferred a more flexible, in-the-moment response.

“This isn’t about strategy, Steve. It’s about your life. You should start thinking about it now, before we get back to Earth and you decide you’re too busy.”

“Don’t know enough to make any decisions right now, Nat.”

“I have your back no matter what, just—think about it. Are you going to keep fighting?”

“You think I can, like this?”

Natasha gave him a disgusted glare. “Us normal humans seem to manage just fine. Don’t avoid the question. Are you going to stay in the fight?”

Bucky had more or less asked him the same thing, the first time Steve visited him after he came out of cryo. Steve’s answer then had come easily enough. Now…

“Depends on what’s waiting for us on Earth, I guess. What about you? We just saved half the universe, I think your ledger’s pretty firmly in the black by now.”

For a split second, something between wonder and relief broke across her face, before Natasha tucked it away again.

“I think I’d get bored, doing anything else. But…I might try being a civilian on for a while. See how it feels. You could too, you know. If saving half the universe means my ledger’s in the black, then I’m pretty sure it means you’ve done your damned duty too.” The twist of her mouth was wry, and Steve gave her a half-grin back, then her eyes went soft and she brought her hand up to his cheek. “You can be selfish after this, Steve. You can be with him, for real. No more fighting, no more war,” she said.

There was no doubt about who she meant. Steve swallowed hard as his heart lurched and ached with want and hope and grief.

“I can’t think about that right now, not until I know…” he whispered, and Natasha drew her hand away and sighed.

“Alright,” she said. “But Steve, you’re about to have a, what, third? fourth? chance with him? Don’t waste it.”

She gave him one last searching look before she kissed him on the cheek and closed her eyes.

Steve followed her lead and tried to sleep. His body was tired, but his mind wasn’t. _Did_ he want to stay in the fight? Was it finally time to tell Bucky just what he wanted, what he’d always wanted? Could he conceive of an answer to those questions, until he knew what— _who_ —was waiting for him on Earth?

What would he say, if Bucky asked him again? _Are you ever going to give up fighting?_

* * *

_Before:_

“You gave up the shield. Are you ever going to give up fighting?”

After a steady, mostly comfortable silence spent looking out at the peaceful lake, Bucky’s question was jarring, and it took a long moment for Steve to orient himself in this new landscape of conversation. He studied Bucky for a hint about what had brought Bucky’s question to mind, but he found no answers in Bucky’s slightly furrowed brow, or in his unreadable stare out at the water. Instead it just hit Steve anew, the changes in Bucky: how much older and sadder he looked, how a face that had seemed made for smiling when they were younger, now seemed made for this new, wounded pensiveness. He was beautiful still, of course, always would be to Steve. But the sharp and glowing handsomeness that used to thrill and tempt Steve had turned into something keener still, a more solemn beauty that pierced right through his heart to make him ache and ache.

“Steve?” prompted Bucky, turning to look at him, his eyes as calm and steady as the lake, and there it was, that ache again. Some days it was easier to bear than others. Steve wondered: would it go away if he finally just told Bucky? Maybe. But if Bucky said, _oh Steve, I love you, but not like that_ , Steve figured it would be like pulling a knife out of his own chest: a wound opened, a fatal outpouring of the blood his heart needed to beat. The ache was preferable to that irrevocable spill. 

Bucky frowned, looking at Steve carefully. He’d been silent too long.

He cleared his throat and said, “Shield or no shield, I’ve still got a duty, Buck.”

“Then I should be out there with you.”

Steve wanted to say _yes, come with me_ , because after everything, after all the grief and distance and separation, fighting together had come easy. Even furious as he’d been, Bucky had fought seamlessly with Steve in Bucharest, no words required. Maybe Steve hadn’t known what to say or do to ease Bucky’s pain on the way to Siberia, and maybe he hadn’t known how to keep Bucky from going back into cryo, but he’d known how to fight alongside him. Their bodies still knew each other. Steve had known how to protect Bucky in battle, each of them tossing the shield back and forth like it was a part of them, each of them fighting like they’d never been separated at all, just two halves of a whole.

Whatever they’d lost to grief and the ice and time, they still had the fight. Steve could only hope they hadn’t lost everything else.

But if he wanted to hold onto that hope, then Steve couldn’t say yes. Not when Bucky looked so desolate and exhausted at the thought of fighting, just as he had in Bucharest. _It always ends in a fight_ , he’d said, and Steve had never seen him look so exhausted, so close to despair. Steve had to have more to offer Bucky than the goddamn fight.

“Hey, no, you don’t have to—you can rest, you can heal up, and—you don’t ever have to fight again. If you don’t want to, I mean.”

Bucky laughed, humorless. “I don’t know what I want. I spent so long just wanting to be safe, to be free, and now...I don’t know.”

He turned his attention to the lake again, his mouth downturned, and Steve scooted closer to him. When this wasn’t met with any coiled tension in Bucky, he risked putting a hand on Bucky’s broad back, and almost sighed in relief when Bucky accepted the gesture and leaned towards Steve. Steve wanted him closer still, of course. He always did. But this was enough, for now. Whatever Bucky wanted, or needed, was enough.

“That’s okay. You’ve got time,” Steve said. “You can take your time, recover for as long as you need to.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Bucky told him.

“I mean you don’t have to rush anything, you’ve been through a lot, and you’re doing so well—”

“No, I mean—what does recovering mean.” Bucky looked down and away from Steve to where he was picking fretfully at the scarf draped across his lap, and his voice came out in a quiet, anxious rush. “I can’t—does that mean I’m—I don’t know, stable enough to fight? Does that mean I’m recovered when I’m okay with fighting again, or when I decide I don’t want to? I’m—the triggers are gone, and I feel better, I do, but—it’s all mixed up. Is there something wrong with me if I want to fight, or is there something wrong with me if I don’t?”

The lost look on Bucky’s face made panic flutter in Steve’s chest. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Bucky like this before, Bucky who’d always been confident and certain and steadfast, and he didn’t know how to fix it. _I’m fucking this up_ , thought Steve frantically. _I can’t fuck this up_.

“You’ve only been out of cryo for a few weeks. You don’t have to make any decisions right away,” said Steve, as gently as he knew how.

Now Bucky leaned away, and Steve winced. “Don’t baby me, Steve.”

“I’m not! I’m just saying, you have time to work it out. You’re safe here, and seems like no one expects you to do anything but help out around the village. You can take it from there. You’ve got plenty of options apart from fighting.”

“Yeah?” asked Bucky, sounding grimly dubious.

“Sure. Well, I don’t know how things work in Wakanda, I guess, but I seem to recall you going on about wanting to do all kinds of things when we were kids: firefighter, architect, engineer, train conductor, though I feel like you just wanted to pull the whistle…”

Bucky’s eyes flicked up towards him once, quickly, and the resigned fear there hit Steve like a blow. “I don’t remember that. I don’t remember wanting any of that,” he said, eyes on his lap.

Every time Steve thought that he understood the terrible things done to Bucky, every time he thought he’d made as much peace as he could with it, had accepted that those horrors couldn’t be changed, he was overwhelmed with some fresh, new injustice like this: Bucky’s innocent ambitions, burned away. Shuri had worked miracles, but there were memories Bucky still hadn’t gotten back, that he might never get back. HYDRA had taken so much from him.

Steve choked down his rage and sorrow. “Do you—do you remember what you did before the war?”

“Some—uh, some office job, right? Or, I think—I remember a restaurant too.”

Bucky was back to picking at his scarf, his long and nimble fingers uncharacteristically clumsy, and Steve almost wanted to take his hand to stop the restless, nervous motion. The sheer uncertainty in his voice was making tears prick at Steve’s eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah, you clerked at a shipping firm, and picked up whatever shifts you could at Matteo’s. It was a real fancy place, they liked having dapper waiters.”

Bucky had more than fit the bill, handsome and sharp-dressed as he was, and the extra money had been a blessing on top of the decent wages from his clerk job. Steve didn’t think Bucky had especially _liked_ either job, but it wasn’t as if that had mattered, back then. You worked to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly.

“Oh,” said Bucky, and nodded, brow furrowed. “That sounds right, I guess.”

“You don’t—we were young, you just got whatever work you could, that you were good at. Don’t have to do anything like it again, if you don’t want.”

Bucky shrugged. “You were good at other things too. I remember that. Your art.”

“Yeah. Did some ad work, sign painting. A few things for the WPA. Nothing exciting.”

“Why’d you give it up?” asked Bucky, turning to look at him. “You didn’t have to stick with SHIELD, after they found you in the ice.”

“Staying with SHIELD felt...right, I guess. Like I said, I’ve got a duty. Not just Captain America, or the Avengers, but this serum, these abilities, the things I can do to fight, and help…” Steve shrugged, tried to smile. “I’m just...not done yet, I guess.”

He figured he’d know it, when he was done, even if the memory of Sam asking him _what makes you happy_ circled his head like a particularly persistent buzzing fly.

“Alright,” said Bucky, disconcertingly toneless. Everything about him had gone very still.

His expression was mostly unreadable to Steve, or maybe it was just new: Steve wasn’t used to seeing this kind of deceptively placid understanding on Bucky’s face. He shifted uncomfortably, waited for whatever annoyance or sadness or resigned acceptance lay underneath that even surface to break the still-waters calm of Bucky’s expression. It didn’t. His face stayed set in impassive lines, as lovely and inscrutable as a sculpture of an angel.

Eventually, Bucky said, “Promise me that when you’re about to throw yourself into whatever war comes next, you’ll come to get me first.”

“What?” said Steve, startled. “Bucky, you don’t have to—I have backup, you know I do. And there’s no war coming, just this Accords mess. You don’t have to get involved in it, or in anything else, if you don’t want to.”

“I know. This is me telling you I want to. Steve, promise me.”

Steve searched Bucky’s face for any hint of the desolation he’d seen earlier, and didn’t find it. His gut told him he was missing something though, that Bucky was seeing something Steve wasn’t. It wasalmost enough make Steve tell him _no, stay out of it, stay safe_. But Bucky’s implacable tone didn’t seem to admit no as a possibility, and he asked for so little, now or even before the war. Steve could give him a promise, even if it was one he dearly hoped he never had to keep.

“Okay. I promise.”

Bucky’s strange stillness melted away, and he leaned against Steve with a sigh, the way he used to on fire escapes and park benches, in diner booths and in front of campfires, an unselfconscious request for comfort, for closeness. So they hadn’t lost this, at least. That encompassing ache inside Steve pulsed and pounded, and he brought his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, tucked him in even closer against him. Bucky let out a long, shaky breath, tipped his head against Steve’s shoulder, and Steve was surer than ever; there was something he was missing here.

“You alright, Buck?” he asked.

He felt Bucky nod, and shift even closer to him, their sides pressed up against each other, and that was when Steve made himself a promise. He wasn’t going to bring another fight to Bucky ever again, not if he could help it. Nothing short of the end of the entire goddamn world was going to pull Bucky into another war.

* * *

The next time Steve had visited Bucky, a couple months later, Bucky had seemed a lot steadier, more certain of himself. The time after that, Bucky had smiled more, and he’d started calling and texting Steve more often between visits. And the time after that, Bucky had told him about the reading and studying he’d been doing, because he’d been thinking of taking some classes at the University of Wakanda. He’d started remembering more, and on every visit, he’d greeted Steve with long, tight hugs. He’d slotted neatly into the life of the Border Tribe village, helping wherever he could and looking after kids, both the goat kind and the human kind.

He’d been building a new life and every single time, he’d been the best thing Steve had ever seen, and on every bitterly hard night on the run, Steve had rested easy knowing that at least Bucky was okay. Bucky was safe and healing and mostly happy, and for those incalculably precious gifts, Steve had known that he wouldn’t have made a single different choice when it came to the whole mess that had taken them to Siberia and past it. If Steve had wanted Bucky, still and more—well, he was used to that old pain, used to it the way he’d once been used to the sharp ache of his crooked spine. He could live with it easily enough, especially when he had their friendship back, when he had Bucky back.

Steve had almost forgotten his promise. Steve had almost started to hope that there wouldn’t be another war.

It had come though. Of course it had come.

_How are you, Buck?_

_Not bad, for the end of the world._

* * *

Steve was fine, he was, but he slept for a lot of the trip back. The exhaustion of the past five or so months hadn’t been undone and erased along with the old timeline; it lingered somewhere deeper in him. And even apart from that, he’d forgotten how easily he used to tire. 

It rankled, enough that Steve contrarily wanted to push himself past the exhaustion, but there wasn’t actually anything to _do_. The ship was on autopilot, and there were no real plans to make, not until they knew what would be waiting for them on Earth. Sleeping was better than being drawn into any conversation about his plans for the future (uncertain and wholly dependent on whether Bucky was alive again or not), his health (shitty though probably not actively life-threatening), or his feelings (emotional responses pending until he knew if everyone was alive or not).

And if Steve was asleep, he wouldn’t have to spend all his time worrying about Bucky and Sam and the others, and he wouldn’t have to deal with the way everyone on the ship was tiptoeing around him, the way they kept staring at him, the second of surprise no one could hide when they turned to him and saw this smaller version of him. Also, Tony kept popping up out of nowhere to drape Steve in emergency blankets.

When Steve glared at him, he just said, “You look cold! And what if you get sick!”

“I’m fine, grandpa!”

“Low blow, Rogers! I am rocking this silver fox look!”

So staying in his bunk and resting up for whatever fresh nightmare the universe would throw at them next was for the best, if only to avoid Tony’s fussing. It just happened to give him way too much time to think. The record needle of his mind kept dropping into the well-worn grooves of his grief.

In all likelihood, Steve no longer had a reason to grieve. And yet, Steve found himself bargaining anyway. If Bucky and Sam were back, Steve would stop taking so many risks. If Bucky and Sam and Wanda and T’Challa were back, Steve would finally talk to someone, a counselor or one of the Wakandan elders who’d helped Bucky so much. If Bucky and Sam and Wanda were back, Steve would finally take that break they’d always badgered him about taking. If Bucky and Sam and Wanda were back, Steve would stop being such an emotionally constipated dumbass and express affection more often.

He’d stop burning government agencies down and he’d stop racking up warrants and he’d stop running. He’d face the music, he’d reach a compromise on the Accords, he’d stop throwing himself into every fight.

And the second he was clear of all that, he’d spend more time with Bucky. All the reasons he hadn’t seemed hollow and foolish now. Every time they’d made do with a weekend here and there, a week or two if they were really lucky, Steve had thought it was okay because there would be more time, later. When Bucky was steadier, when his recovery had progressed more, then Steve would tell him: _I love you and I want you, and I think I always have_. But not yet, he’d told himself, not yet. After the next mission, after the next disaster, after Tony cooled down, after the Accords got worked out, after they weren’t fugitives any more…two years had passed like that, the _afters_ piling up so high that the clear horizon of hope beyond them had almost disappeared. Two years of watching Bucky recover in snapshots, two years of missing out on making new memories together.

Steve had been so fucking stupid.

He’d realized that, after Thanos, when his regrets had burned him on a pyre that didn’t even have the decency to turn him to ash along with everything else. How the hell had he ever thought he could count on more time, how the hell had he ever taken the gift of having Bucky back for granted. He wouldn’t do it again.

If he had a fourth chance with Bucky, a fourth and maybe final opportunity…then he’d do right by Bucky. He’d bring them both home from the war, he’d answer Bucky and Natasha’s question: _yes, I’m getting out of the fight, I’m done._ He’d risk laying bare the longest secret he’d ever kept.

Just so long as he had Bucky back, he’d do everything right this time.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sometime during what Steve thought was the second day, Natasha woke him when they were close enough to Earth to receive a transmission.

“Steve, c’mon, get up. T’Challa’s on comms.”

He got up and followed her to the cockpit, where the rest of the team was gathered too, everyone clustered around the comms panel. His stomach warred with his heart for which one was making him the most uncomfortable as all his anxiety came rushing up, but he squeezed his way to the front anyway. There were benefits to being small again.

“So everyone’s back?” asked Tony, leaning towards the radio. “ _Everyone_?”

“As far as we can tell. There are still casualties from the battles of course, but—everyone is back.” Steve’s knees went weak with relief just hearing T’Challa’s familiar voice, the joy and triumph audible even in his usual measured and dignified tones. Everyone was back. That meant Bucky too, it had to, T’Challa would’ve said if Bucky wasn’t back, surely. “What about all of you? Is Steve there, are you all well?”

“I’m here,” said Steve. “We’re all here, we’re all okay.”

“Steve?” he heard someone say.

One word, one syllable, across who knew how many light years, but Steve knew that voice. Steve would always know that voice. It was both exactly like and not at all like the last time he’d heard Bucky say his name.

“Bucky. Buck, are you—”

Some awful sound between a sob and a laugh escaped him and he swallowed hard. He put his hands over his mouth to keep any other cry from spilling out, because Bucky would worry, and he ended up bent over the comms panel, breathing as slow and even as he could manage. Bucky, who had been ash and dust, who had disappeared with nothing more than Steve’s name on his lips and a sigh of wind, was alive and whole again. That one word—Steve’s name, all hope and desperation— was the miraculous proof of it.

“I’m okay,” said Bucky. “Are you? Don’t tell me you pulled some dumb shit like taking on Thanos with your bare hands—”

“No, no, Nebula killed him. I’m—I’m fine, Buck. I’m just—so fucking happy you’re back. Are Sam and Wanda with you, are they—”

“Back in the land of the living, woo!” came Sam’s voice, as Wanda said, “I’m here, I’m okay!”

Natasha raised her eyebrows at him: _not gonna tell him?_ Steve shook his head. Not yet. Bucky would see for himself soon enough anyway. No use worrying him before then.

“ _Steve_. Are you really fine?” asked Bucky, and even through all the chatter and cross-talk, Bucky’s low, worried voice sounded close and private, and so dear. It almost burst out of him then: _I love you_ , but talk about bad timing. Steve was pretty sure if he said _I love you_ now, Bucky would hear _goodbye_ or _I’m basically dying_ , and Steve didn’t want that.

Steve wanted Bucky to just keep talking, about anything, about everything, in perpetuity. Skype didn’t work in outer space, much less a cell phone, but Steve wished they did, so he could keep Bucky on the line. It didn’t even matter if they didn’t talk: he just wanted to hear him breathing. He wanted the proof that Bucky existed in the world again.

“I’m really fine,” promised Steve, and wiped the tears off his face, because he _was_ fine, serum or no serum.

“Yeah? Peter, Romanoff, he’s not lying, is he?”

“Buck!”

“He’s not lying,” said Natasha smoothly.

Parker was less smooth. “…Yeah? I mean, no?” he said, less than convincingly. Steve glared at him, then sniffed, which probably ruined the effect. “No, he’s not lying, I mean! He’s not hurt or anything!”

Parker beamed, clearly proud of this truthful deflection. Steve sighed. That wasn’t going to put Bucky at ease. Or Sam either, apparently.

“Yeah, no, now I’m suspicious. How the fuck do you keep a secret identity, kid?” asked Sam, and Peter’s face fell.

“Language,” tried Steve, half-heartedly, and was treated to a round of boos and laughter.

“The kid wears a full face-mask is how,” said Tony dryly, and patted Peter on the shoulder.

“I really am fine,” said Steve, injecting all the reassurance he could into the words.

His voice still came out thick and wobbly, choked out through the stubborn knot of emotion his vocal cords appeared to be thoroughly tied up in. Also his eyes kept leaking. Maybe he was allergic to something on Thanos’ dumb spaceship. He’d get it together by the time they got back to Earth, and then he’d exchange a normal hug with Bucky and a not-so-normal declaration of love, and everything would be _fine_.

“Seriously, he’s fine, he’s just, you know, having too many feelings,” said Natasha, and Steve elbowed her. She elbowed back. “Our ETA is in about 20 hours…”

From there, they went over logistics and details about where the ships should land, hashed out a tentative statement to release to the world, and Steve did his best to stay focused. There was still work to do. Now that he knew Bucky and the others were alive and well, Steve could get to it with a lighter heart.

A lighter, but still equally anxious heart. A whole new set of worries occupied him now: what if Bucky was put off by Steve’s return to his old self? What if even Bucky tiptoed around him? What if Bucky thought of him as weak, dead weight, too much trouble in this new life? Even as he thought that, he was aware of how unfair it was to Bucky. Bucky had never, ever thought of him as dead weight, as lesser.

What if Bucky didn’t want him the way Steve wanted him?

Things were going to be different, again, another configuration of new-old versions of them coming together yet another time, and maybe this would be the one configuration that didn’t fit, maybe this would be the breaking point. Maybe Steve’s fourth chance at getting this right was just him being a dollar short and decades too late from Bucky’s perspective _._

“You’re doing great, Steve,” Natasha whispered as Rhodey updated them on Earth’s defenses. Steve detected an entire symphony of sarcasm in her tone.

“Really?”

“On a scale of manly back pat to hugging for twenty minutes straight—”

“ _Who told you about that_ ,” hissed Steve.

“That was pretty firmly in the middle,” finished Natasha. “You know it’s okay to hug your best friend for twenty minutes straight after you thought you lost him for good, right?” She gave him a sly, sidelong look, her lips slowly curving into a smile. “You could even go for a kiss, like that V-J day photo.”

Steve flushed as his mind unhelpfully superimposed his own face onto his mental image of the nurse being embraced by a sailor for a thorough and passionate kiss.

“Not really how I plan to make my move,” he muttered, and Natasha’s eyebrows shot up.

“But you _are_ planning to make a move! About time, Rogers.”

“When the time’s right,” insisted Steve.

Bucky was—had been—was, dammit, doing great in Wakanda, recovering and healing, and he hadn’t needed Steve burdening him with any confusing feelings, not then. Now...well, once Steve was sure Bucky was okay, he was gonna do it. For once in his fucking life, he wasn’t going to fuck up the timing. No more kissing people only to immediately crash a plane or become a fugitive or die or whatever. No, this time, Steve was going to kiss the object of his affections and then he was going to have a _conversation_ with them about his _feelings_ , like a well-adjusted adult who could definitely do the relationship thing. Even if just the thought of it made his heartbeat rush and stutter.

“When the hell is the time going to be more right?” demanded Natasha. Parker shushed them, which caught Tony’s attention.

“Kids. Do you have something to share with the class?” asked Tony. Then vague horror and disgust slid across his face. “What have I become. Talk amongst yourselves, whatever, I don’t care. We’re just discussing matters of global importance, it’s fine.”

“No, I was listening,” said Steve, and cleared his throat. “I don’t think there’s much of a threat from what’s left of Thanos’s forces, but we have Captain Danvers, so we should be covered until we can do a full sweep and confirm no one else is headed for Earth…”

* * *

On their descent back to Earth, they all gathered in the ship’s cavernous cockpit, eager for the first sight of their loved ones.

“So, I’m gonna pencil in about two hours for crying and hugging and reunion time, but then we should probably, I don’t know, contact some world governments and do some superhero shit,” said Tony as he guided the ship’s careful descent back to Earth, aiming for a gentle landing in the open plains surrounding Mount Bashenga.

That sounded fine to Steve, so long as Bucky and Sam stayed in arm’s reach. Steve didn’t especially intend to let Bucky leave his sight for a while. “Yeah, okay.”

Tony squinted at him. “You’re exempted. You need a full medical workup.”

“I _told_ you, I’m fine, I got by like this for 24 whole years, I even got through boot camp with this body. I can still—”

“I saw that thing in the Smithsonian about all your medical issues before, Steve,” said Natasha. “You’re going to see the Wakandan doctors.”

Natasha’s tone brooked no arguments, and the tightness around her eyes and the slight downturn of her lips said she was worried. And if she was letting it show, she was pretty damn worried. Steve hated worrying Natasha, even if she didn’t _need_ to be this worried.

“And anyway, you’re still technically a fugitive. Sit tight in Wakanda, get that alarming wheezing situation looked at, we’ll let you know when you’re clear to join us in bureaucratic hell,” added Tony.

“Natasha’s a fugitive too! And Lang!”

“Yeah, I don’t care so much, I’m going to go see the Bartons first thing,” she said.

“Excuse you, I served my time!” protested Lang. “And, like, not that I haven’t treasured this saving the world time with you guys, but I am immediately ditching all of you to see my family.”

“Fair enough,” said Tony.

Bruce put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Steve. We’ve got this. And hey—it’s not too late to fake your death.”

“I—what?”

Bruce blinked at him earnestly. “You can get out for real! Fake your death! We can pretend you died in the battle against Thanos. Retire to Wakanda! It’s the _perfect opportunity_.”

Now Bruce had both his hands on Steve’s shoulders, and he was squeezing kind of hard and looking pretty intense. Not green though, just—intense.

“You know, he’s not wrong,” said Natasha, looking far too interested in the prospect of Steve faking his own death. He gave her a _what the fuck_ look and she just shrugged, eyes glinting with mingled mischief and interest.

“I, uh, know a guy, if you need some fake papers, Cap,” said Lang.

“That’s—you know what, I appreciate the thought, Bruce, Scott, but I’m not going to _fake my own death_ , thank you,” he said, and gently removed Bruce’s hands from his shoulders.

Not that Steve couldn’t see the appeal of killing Captain America for good, but he wasn’t about to ditch the team _now_ of all times, serum or no serum.

“Yeah, hey, what the fuck! Cap can’t cash in a get out of apocalypse-fixing aftermath free card by pretending he died. At least—not unless we _all_ get to fake our own deaths,” said Tony.

“I’m not faking my death!” said Parker. “I have too much to live for!”

“No one’s faking their own deaths! Jesus.” Clearly, Steve had just been tagged _it_ in Avengers Sanity Tag. “Let’s just go meet up with the rest of our people, then we’ll figure out what to do from there once we get a sitrep from them, alright?”

“So, two hours crying and hugging and reunion time good for you, Cap? We can probably bump it up to three before we should really start calling the UN and shit, but I feel like you’re maybe going to need more than that with your besties.”

“I can multi-task,” Steve told Tony. “We can _all_ multi-task while crying and hugging.”

* * *

As became rapidly and embarrassingly evident to Steve, they could not, in fact, multi-task while crying and hugging.

* * *

The scene on the plain at the foot of Mount Bashenga was a joyously chaotic one. Steve slipped through it practically unnoticed at first: T’Challa and Rhodey were busy with Tony, their faces alight with incandescent joy and relief, Okoye mirroring it at T’Challa’s side; Wanda and Natasha were gripping each other tightly—they hadn’t recovered Vision yet, Steve remembered with a pang, though Shuri had hope she’d be able to; the Guardians were laughing and shouting in raucous delight, Bruce, Lang, and Thor swept up in their happy, loud reunion. 

And then, finally, Steve saw them: standing on one of the plain’s flat boulders were Sam and Bucky and Shuri, huddled close together, Sam peering towards the ships, Bucky and Shuri gripping each other’s hands, looking nervously through the crowd for—for him, probably. Even from a distance, he could see Bucky’s taut stillness, could tell that Shuri was probably murmuring something funny and reassuring into Bucky’s ear.

Steve just looked at them for a few seconds, full of a love and relief so big that his heart felt like a tremulous soap bubble being blown bigger and bigger, stretched shimmering and thin to hold this whole scene inside of him for one quivering, perfect moment. It was the absolute opposite of the moment when half of existence had turned to ash. For the first time since then, Steve began to feel wholly solid again, real and alive, instead of the furious and terrified shell he’d been since Thanos won.

Then Bucky saw him. If Bucky felt even a second of surprise or dismay or alarm, Steve didn’t see it. He only saw Bucky light up with the best, brightest smile Steve had ever seen on his face, and then Bucky jumped off the boulder and ran for him.

“Steve!”

Steve must have moved too, because it felt like less than a second before Bucky was wrapped around him, solid and warm, a dizzying mix of familiar and unfamiliar, with Steve small again and Bucky broader and stronger than he’d ever been back in Brooklyn. But his embrace was as tight as it always was, as it always had been, and Steve buried his face in Bucky’s broad chest. He didn’t know if he was crying or laughing. He turned his good ear into Bucky’s chest and listened to the happy and excited thumping of Bucky’s heart, only barely audible to Steve’s now-diminished sense of hearing, but still the only beat that made sense of his world.

Bucky was alive again. Bucky had come back to Steve again, or maybe Steve had come back to Bucky this time. It didn’t matter. Bucky was here and he was okay. Relief tore through him nearly as forcefully as the grief had, with a couple ragged sobs that he hoped were too quiet for Bucky to hear. Too soon, Bucky let him go to examine him for injuries.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” he asked, his hands patting and skimming over Steve gently, in search of bandages or wounds. Then he stopped abruptly, blinked, and peered into Steve’s eyes. “And shit, hey, you’re not Steve from the 30s, right? This isn’t some time travel bullshit?”

Steve loved him so fucking much.

“No. No, Buck. Just—you know how you asked, way back when, if the serum was permanent? Turns out, not so much. Not when you mess around with Infinity Stones, anyway.”

“Well, you’re alive, and all the rest of us are alive, so I guess messing around with the Infinity Stones worked out okay,” said Bucky, all easy acceptance as he pulled Steve back into a loose hug.

Steve nodded, and held Bucky more tightly. Maybe if he held onto Bucky long enough, he could render the memory of watching him fall apart distant and unimportant, could turn it into a nightmare that no longer saw the light of day.

He should have made some dry comment, some joke, something to turn this into any other close call, but all that came out was, “Bucky,” and it came out broken and shaky, because he couldn’t really think of anything else to say. Any hope of keeping his shit together through this was swiftly crumbling.

“Shh, it’s okay, I’m okay, we’re okay.” Bucky rubbed his warm hand up and down Steve’s back. “Keep breathing slow for me, alright?”

Steve hadn’t noticed he was sucking in such fast, gulping breaths, so he tried to do as Bucky asked. Bucky’s own steady if slightly shaky breathing set the pace and Steve followed it. Even breathing slower, Steve’s chest and throat were feeling pretty tight, but Steve ignored it. _I’ll do it, I’ll kiss him just as soon as I can, you know, actually breathe properly_ , he told himself. By then, Sam and Shuri had reached them.

“Steve?” asked Sam, his voice hesitant.

Steve heard Shuri gasp. “Time travel!? Is this 20th century Steve?”

“No, just normal Steve,” said Bucky, beaming down at him.

For the first time since opening his eyes on Titan, Steve was entirely, wholly okay with having lost his super-serumed body. Steve hid his sudden tears in Bucky’s chest for a second, before lifting his head and throwing himself at Sam, who caught him with a grunt.

“Wha—okay. I got you. We’re okay, Steve. We’re all fine. And wow, okay, you are really small without the serum, huh?”

Steve pulled back and punched him in the arm, which ugh, only hurt him because of Sam’s dumb muscles, and just made Sam laugh, so he let go of Sam to give Shuri a hug instead. She was taller than him now, a somewhat dizzying realization.

Shuri hesitated for only a second, then wrapped her thin, strong arms around him and jumped up and down a little in joy. “You did it! And you didn’t die! Or—are we sad about this pocket Steve situation?”

“We are not,” said Steve firmly, and turned back to Bucky to give him a proper look.

Steve didn’t think he’d felt any bandages or injuries, and Bucky was all present and accounted for, vibranium arm included. There were tired lines on his face, post-battle weariness evident, but his eyes were still bright and smiling, and there was no telltale tension in his shoulders. His hair, Steve noted with a rush of furious tenderness, was a somewhat frazzled mess. He must have been indulging his nervous habit of running his hands through his hair. Somehow, this observation led to Steve’s eyes overflowing with tears. Again. Goddammit, the first time he kissed Bucky was _not_ going to be while he was crying. If it was, he wouldn’t blame Bucky for refusing a second one.

Bucky dug into one of his many pockets and pulled out a handkerchief, and shoved it at Steve. And people called Steve a goddamn boy scout.

“You’ve got a leaking situation,” said Bucky.

“You asshole,” said Steve, snatching the handkerchief to wipe at his face and nose. “Yeah I’ve got a leaking situation, you were _dead_ , all of you were _dead_. Sam was just gone, and I watched you—” Steve couldn’t even finish that sentence, couldn’t ever get past the remembered horror of the sight, even with Sam and Bucky whole and well in front of him, so he just used his free hand to grab Bucky’s hand instead, reassuringly solid and warm and definitely not turning to dust. “I didn’t _handle it so great_.”

Shuri looked kind of alarmed, but there was no use pretending otherwise to Sam and Bucky, given that his body seemed set on giving him away with this stream of tears he couldn’t seem to stop. That was okay though. He could leave the denial stage of grief behind. It wasn’t relevant any more. 

“Yeah, we can see that,” said Sam.

Bucky squeezed Steve’s hand, and gave him a searching, solemn look. “How long was it for you?” he asked.

“Five and a half months,” he said, and as he said it out loud, it didn’t seem like so long. Less than a year, less than half a year, even. “How long was it for _you_?”

“Hard to say,” said Sam, and exchanged a shrug and a look with Bucky.

“We didn’t have any way to measure the time passing. But five and a half months sounds about right,” said Bucky.

“And it was just a couple of days for the rest of us,” added Shuri.

“It was longest for Tony,” said Steve, and leaned against Bucky. “But yeah. Five months, seventeen days, and fourteen hours. Just about.”

Bucky had been in cryo in Wakanda for about that long, and Steve had gone over two years thinking Bucky was dead the last time. Five and a half months wasn’t so long, in the grand scheme of things. But every time he lost Bucky, it only hurt worse, it seemed, only became more and more unbearable. He got breathless with useless panic just thinking about it, and sucked in as deep a breath as he could manage. He’d forgotten how much the serum had taken the edges off the way his feelings found their echoes in his body, had forgotten the constant little betrayals of his heart and lungs and guts. 

His chest really did feel tight. He’d almost started to hope his asthma wasn’t much of an issue anymore, after a couple of days on the ship had only led to some coughing and wheezing. That, clearly, had been a fool’s hope.

“Shuri, we oughta get him into your lab, he’s gonna need an inhaler,” said Bucky.

“I’m fine,” protested Steve, then immediately proved himself wrong by coughing and wheezing. “I should—go talk to T’Challa though—and Wanda—”

“Uh huh, talking requires breathing though, so let’s go make sure you can keep doing that,” said Shuri, and she and Bucky started efficiently herding him back towards her lab in the mountain.

Sam clapped him on the shoulder then started jogging towards the crowd of happy reunions. “I’ll tell everyone where you are, okay? We’ll all debrief in the lab.”

“Tony scheduled two hours for hugging and crying, it can wait until then,” rasped Steve.

“That’s thoughtful of him,” said Bucky wryly. “Shit, hey, speaking of Stark, Peter’s with you guys, right? He’s okay? I should go check on him—”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” said Steve, and pulled on Bucky’s hand before he could move away.

Bucky took the hint and stayed close, slinging his arm around Steve’s shoulder. There was a distant time when Steve used to get annoyed at this gesture, mostly because of how often it was a prelude to Bucky roughly messing up his hair. Just the prospect of Bucky doing that again now made happy tears rise in Steve’s eyes, which was embarrassing.

So okay, he was a little overwrought at the moment. Bucky’s eyes were suspiciously shiny too, so clearly he wasn’t the only one.

Bucky kept up a low patter of conversation as they went to the lab, his voice pitched close to Steve’s good ear, telling Steve about the past couple of days of chaos and clean up, the strangeness of the world inside the Soul Stone. Steve leaned against Bucky and listened.

It had taken a while to get this back, after Bucky came out of cryo.

Bucky was still more given to silence than he had ever been before, or even during, the war, but on good days, he rambled at Steve the same way he always had, in whatever medium was available to him: over Skype, on the phone, in texts, over breakfast and dinner and before bed in his cozy cottage in the Border Tribe village. Bucky was no longer the chatterbox he’d been when they were kids, was no longer likely to start the same kind of expansive and boisterous conversations or rounds of bickering, but if he spoke less now, he made it count more, and Steve treasured just about every word. He let the welcome sound fill him now, like he was a dry riverbed being replenished by rainwater.

Everything had been so fucking quiet, after Thanos had snapped his gauntleted fingers.

It wasn’t quiet anymore: there was Bucky’s voice, and Shuri’s, and the shouts of joy and laughter, and even the rattle of Steve’s lungs, all of it a welcome cacophony. It only faded away when they went into Shuri’s med lab in Mount Bashenga, where the machinery of the labs and the mines whirred away at an almost subsonic pitch. Steve was unsettled before he realized why it sounded strange to him: every other time he’d been in here, Shuri had been playing music.

She was clearly too busy to start any music playing now though, her fingers twisting and tapping away at her kimoyo beads and their displays, even as she directed Steve to lie on the examination table under the partially enclosed arch that served as her diagnostic and treatment apparatus. Bucky went with him without Steve having to ask, and he kept a tight grip on Steve’s hand as they both looked up at the geometric tiled lights of Shuri’s scanner. Steve felt more than heard the deep humming thrum of the machine as it started its work.

“Just give me one minute to get you the right medicine! Bucky, keep him under the scanner, please!” Shuri said, already running to some other part of the lab.

Bucky nodded without looking away from Steve. His wide eyes were betraying some worry now, and Steve squeezed his hand.

“You okay?” asked Steve between labored breaths, because Bucky had fallen silent the moment Steve got on the exam table.

Bucky nodded, smiled wanly. “I missed you, but I didn’t miss this,” he said, and touched Steve’s heaving chest with their joined hands.

The memories bloomed between them, more sweet than bitter now that time had leached most of the memories’ fear. The emotion that lingered in those memories wasn’t the terrifying feeling of struggling for breath: it was the comfort of having Bucky, or his mom, there with him.

“Oh, I dunno, wasn’t all bad,” Steve said with an answering small smile, and then before Bucky could ask what he meant, Shuri was back to stick an oxygen mask looking thing over Steve’s nose and mouth.

“Breathe in as deep as you can,” she ordered.

The mask misted cool but bitter air into his nose and mouth, and after only a couple of breaths, his lungs and throat opened up to let more air in.

“Better?” asked Bucky, and Steve nodded.

“Keep that on while I run more scans,” said Shuri.

“I’m sure you have better things to do, I’m fine now, I can—”

“I said keep the mask on! Really Captain Rogers, I swear you would be telling me you’re just fine if you were bleeding out from battle wounds. You may have no wish to get your superpowers back, but that is no excuse for walking around with—” She peered at the information streaming across her screens, then gave him a deadpan glare. “Merciful Bast, a heart that will scarcely bear two more years of regular exertion, asthma, ulcers, anemia, hearing loss, colorblindness…did you get no medical treatment _at all_ before you became a supersoldier?!”

Steve pulled off the mask. “It was the _30s_ and we were _poor_.”

“There wasn’t much treatment worth a damn for most of that back then,” added Bucky.

“Yeah, they gave me cigarettes for my asthma.”

Shuri let out a strangled yelp. “ _Cigarettes_!? Your people are _barbaric_. And as if medical care should be _something to pay for—!_ ”

“ _Shuri_. Can you help him?”

“Of course! Give me some time to set up the correct programs for a course of nanite treatment, then we can administer it overnight, that will take care of most of this...your heart is what really concerns me. Then I can send you on to one of the clinics in the Golden City for the rest. They will know better about any more long term courses of treatment.”

Steve watched, fascinated, as she twisted and spun her kimoyo beads and her fingers danced out commands to the screens and equipment, more glowing scans of Steve’s body appearing then being dismissed by her fast hands. She let one scan stay, this one showing Steve’s skeleton, and traced down the curve of the image’s crooked spine.

“You’re welcome to consult with any of the physicians there about this bend in your spine, but I suspect they will tell you to leave it be, since you’re an adult and the curvature isn’t deforming or debilitating.”

“But you can just…fix everything else,” said Steve faintly. “Even without the serum.”

“I can fix _most_ of this,” she said. “Medication and lifestyle can manage the rest.”

“I love this place _so much_ ,” murmured Bucky, finally letting go of Steve’s hand to go stand behind Shuri and stare at her screens. Shuri turned and grinned at him.

“I can’t ask you to do this for me,” said Steve, and ignored Bucky’s noise of inarticulate rage and/or disbelief.

Shuri raised an incredulous eyebrow. “It costs me nothing but some time to do this for you, Captain Rogers, and I would do it for Bucky’s sake alone if not your own. But you have helped restore my brother—and half of my nation—to me, to say nothing of half of the entire _universe_. This is quite literally the least I can do for you.”

“I don’t know…” said Steve. Dizzying dread hit him, and his heart pounded so hard it almost hurt.

Steve didn’t _want_ to be sick and unhealthy, but this somehow felt like cheating, like he’d made his bargain with the Power Stone and had been crossing his fingers behind his back the entire time. It couldn’t be this easy. There had to be a catch.

“What do you mean you don’t _know_?” said Bucky, turning to face him again. “You don’t need the serum to be healthy, Steve!”

“I know that, just…it seems too easy, I guess.”

“Oh yeah, super easy, it only took half of the universe ceasing to exist and you making some crazy bargain with a magic rock to bring it back. Jesus Christ, Rogers, you itching to martyr yourself that badly? Hasn’t it gotten old by now?”

Bucky’s tone was of mild annoyance, but his eyes betrayed his hurt and his anger, and his arms were crossed over his chest tightly.

“That’s not what this is about,” Steve protested. “It’s just not much of a sacrifice if—”

Now Bucky threw his hands up and started pacing. Steve winced; he hadn’t meant to actually piss Bucky off.

“If you don’t spend the rest of your short life suffering, is that it? Bullshit! You’ve sacrificed enough!”

“I don’t think I have to suffer, Buck, come on.”

“Then what is it? If this were 1939 and we, I don’t know, came into a surprise inheritance or something, and could afford to get you to a real doctor, get you the good medicine that actually worked…would you have said no then?” Steve shook his head slowly. “Then how is this different?”

He didn’t _want_ to martyr himself, and he didn’t want to be sick. And he sure as hell didn’t want to make Bucky unhappy. Just seeing Bucky’s big, wounded and worried eyes was making something squeeze uncomfortably tight in Steve’s chest, and he knew it wasn’t his lungs. Steve always felt like history’s greatest monster when he caught that look from Bucky. Shuri’s face and hands were nothing but calm, but there was something vaguely threatening about the way she was narrowing her eyes at him. She’d absolutely consider him history’s greatest monster too if he upset Bucky like this.

Steve didn’t necessarily want the super soldier serum back. That was borrowing trouble, opening a Pandora’s box that by now Steve knew ought to stay closed. But being almost entirely well without the serum…that seemed too good to be true, made him feel faintly frantic with the sense that he should be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“There’s no…I don’t know, weird energy readings or anything? No influence from the Infinity Stones?” Steve asked Shuri.

“No, nothing. Nothing inconsistent with recent space travel, anyway. Actually, it’s very interesting, there’s no indication you’ve literally time traveled either, but I would need to compare with the rest of your teammates to see if that’s just you, or—” Bucky raised his eyebrows at her, and she dropped the, admittedly interesting, digression. “That’s not relevant right now. I do not anticipate any alarming side effects or consequences to a course of nanite treatment.”

That was less reassuring than she maybe intended, given that it wasn’t as if any of them had anticipated any of this Infinity Stone, time travel business either. But hell, if something ended up going wrong, if the universe exacted yet another price for this…Steve would just have to deal with it when it happened.

“Alright,” said Steve, squaring his jaw. “Do it.”

Bucky sighed in relief, most of his tension draining away. “Good, great, _thank you_ ,” he said, and came back to perch beside Steve on the scanner’s bed.

Bucky stayed with him as Shuri took some samples and went over the treatment with them in brief but thorough detail. T’Challa and the others all poured into the lab just as she was finishing up, and then another round of overwrought reunions ensued. In the end, the scheduled hugging and crying time took up the full two hours and then some, to the mild alarm of everyone for whom only a few chaotic and confusing days had passed. From their perspective, most of the Avengers had disappeared for half a day not long after half the planet had turned to ash, then half of the planet’s population had returned as if they’d never been gone at all.

“You guys had a rough time of it, huh,” asked Rhodey, and it wasn’t really a question.

He crossed his arms and looked down at Steve, Bucky, Sam, Wanda, and Natasha, who’d found a clear spot of floor in a corner of the labs to curl up together. They’d tried the whole multitasking thing, but it hadn’t ended up working out. Steve and Natasha nodded up at Rhodey. 

“Be grateful you got to stay in the timeline where only a couple days passed,” said Natasha as she stroked Wanda’s hair.

“Your hair went all white in the other timeline,” added Steve.

“Oh, so _that’s_ why Tony’s been going on about how ‘we used to match’ and ‘why don’t we match any more.’ Being sort of dead wasn’t fun either, I’m guessing.”

“It wasn’t a cakewalk, no,” said Sam, as he, Wanda, and Bucky all shared a speaking kind of look.

“It was better when we all found each other,” said Wanda. “Before then…”

None of them offered any further explanation of what it was like before they’d found each other in the Soul Stone. Bucky shivered beside Steve, and Steve looked up at his face. His expression was calm but blank, and at odds with the way he was curling into Steve. Steve raised his eyebrows at him: _you okay?_ Bucky ducked his head in a quick nod, but his eyes cut down and away from Steve, and his mouth twisted downwards briefly: one of Bucky’s more obvious tells. Steve noticed it, because it was hard not to from so close, and Bucky noticed him noticing it. _Later_ , said the now rueful tilt of his mouth. Steve would hold him to it.

For now, Steve just pulled him closer. Maybe they were all doing a less than stellar job of talking anything out, but physical comfort, at least, came easy right now.

Rhodey frowned down at all of them.

“Okay. Everyone involved in this clearly needs…so much therapy. A vacation…or a sabbatical. Retirement, maybe. But hey, can you all pull it together for just a little bit longer?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Rhodes, I’m not a child,” snapped Natasha. Her sharp tone was somewhat lacking in its usual withering effect given that she was tucked under Sam’s arm, with Wanda lying on her lap.

“I’m fine!” said Steve, straightening his spine into some approximation of being at attention.

“Sure, sure. Seriously though, can you all at least pretend to keep your shit together for long enough to deal with Ross and, like, all the rest of the governments of the world?”

“That depends, is he gonna arrest us and throw us in Gitmo Under the Sea again?” asked Sam.

“Yeah, we’re in violation of the Accords, aren’t we? Because we didn’t, I don’t know, stop and ask nicely before restoring half of the entire universe to life,” said Steve.

“I’ll help you guys work it all out,” said Rhodey with a sigh.

* * *

Tony, Rhodey, Lang and Natasha left Wakanda that afternoon, taking Parker with them. They all had family and loved ones back in the US, and were the least likely to be arrested on sight.

“It’s not too late to fake our deaths,” said Bruce as they watched the others start to board one of the royal Talon jets.

“No one is getting out of this debriefing,” said Rhodey. “We’ll call when it’s safe for the rest of you to come face the music. Which you are going to do. Because half of the planet disappearing for a couple of days is the kind of thing that does, in fact, require some accountability and explanation.”

He wasn’t wrong. But Steve was not looking forward to the meetings and briefings and hearings. He’d almost rather take another punch to the face from Thanos’ giant purple fist. Still, it had to be done, and after it was done, Steve could—well, Steve wasn’t really sure what he’d do, after, apart from be with Bucky, but he’d figure that out later.

“We’ll be ready,” he told Rhodey, and Rhodey nodded, softening now.

“Hey, have I said thanks yet?” Steve grinned, and shook his head no at Rhodey. “Thanks. And don’t worry too much, any of you. I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be clear skies from here.”

Rhodey turned and got into the jet, and less than a minute later, it was in the sky. Steve, Sam, and Bucky watched until it was just a shining speck in the swathe of cloudless blue, then Sam and Bucky both threw their arms around Steve’s shoulders and practically frog-marched him back to the lab.

“C’mon pal, you’ve got a date with some nanites,” said Bucky.

* * *

Steve had thought he knew and understood grief, and loss. There was a poem he’d read once: _the art of losing isn’t hard to master_ , and stranded in the 21st century, alive and alone, stripped of his home and seventy years’ worth of time and nearly everyone he’d ever known, he’d understood it. Losing was easy. You didn’t have to do anything at all, really. It all just fell from your hands. _The art of losing’s not too hard to master, though it may look like (write it!) like disaster._

When he’d lost Peggy, and given up the shield and the Avengers, and watched Bucky go into the ice again, he’d thought of the poem again, almost giddily, hysterically. Steve could lose and lose and still keep going. Never mind how hollow he felt, never mind how he felt like a very small thing in a vast and cavernous empty space. He could bear it.

He’d gotten Bucky back, at least. For a little while, anyway.

But after Thanos, he’d realized that he didn’t know a single fucking thing about the art of losing. He’d have given anything, _anything_ , just to feel that old hollowness again, because what came after it, what was left after losing even more, was worse. There was no empty space left, no numb, hollow void to protect the smallness of him. No, even that was ripped away. Instead, there was just him: small and raw and almost alone, bare to the elemental force of a torrent of loss, and if not for Natasha and the slim, wild hope of defeating Thanos, he would not have made it.

All that was undone, now. He had Bucky and Sam and Wanda and T’Challa and half of the universe back again. But a not insignificant part of him was still that raw-skinned and shaking small animal, overwhelmed by feeling. Five and a half months of loss, of desolation, had seared and stripped away some essential, protective parts of him. A night of Shuri’s treatments with Bucky at his side had done nothing to bring them back.

Which was all to say, Steve did not handle it well when he woke up alone in Shuri’s lab the next morning.

He was about three minutes into what he distantly understood to be a panic attack, as the bed’s medical monitoring system chimed with increasing urgency, when Bucky rushed in with damp hair and a fresh change of clothes in his arms.

“Steve? Are you okay?”

Steve was not okay. This was painfully, horribly obvious. But maybe Bucky could be persuaded to ignore it, so long as Steve pretended his eyes weren’t streaming tears, and if the damned monitors would stop giving him away.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, I just—you weren’t here when I woke up.”

It sounded dumb, when he said it. And yet, to his horror, his voice came out thick and wobbly, like he was a toddler rudely awakened from a nap. He couldn’t quite explain the omnipresent throb of terror that had persisted among all of them after Thanos, the visceral sense of horror of knowing that anyone could disappear, could fall apart right in front of you. No one had, after that first snap of Thanos’ fingers. Still, none of them had been able to shake the knowledge that it could happen, that it already had.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I thought you’d be asleep for a little longer. I just went to grab a shower and change, and get some clothes for you.”

Bucky set said clothes down at the foot of the bed, then he sat at Steve’s side and wrapped him up in a hug, like morning hugs were a totally normal and unremarkable thing to do. While Steve had every intention of just clapping Bucky on the back a couple times and slipping out of his hold, the orders got scrambled somewhere between his brain and his body, and he clung to Bucky instead. He tucked his face against where Bucky’s neck met his shoulder and breathed in the clean, slightly spicy and grassy scent of a freshly showered Bucky, undeniably real. The medical monitors stopped chiming.

Would this be a good time to come clean and kiss him? Probably not. _I love you, sure hope you could be romantically interested in me, your best friend who’s apparently just constantly hovering on the edge of a nervous breakdown._ He sighed and squeezed Bucky tighter.

“Where’s everyone else?” asked Steve, voice steady now, as Bucky’s hand stroked up and down his back in easy, lulling sweeps.

“At the Citadel, there’s gonna be a big teleconference with the UN and the entire rest of the world, basically, and then a press conference after that.”

“I gotta show up to both of those,” said Steve.

He wasn’t especially excited about the conferences, but they were undeniably necessary. The world deserved a proper explanation, even if Steve didn’t want to be the one to give it, not when he was feeling so selfish and nervy. He wanted to spend the day with Bucky and the others, he wanted to hear what it had really been like for them in the Soul Stone. He wanted to ignore the rest of the world for just a little bit longer, let Bucky’s arms wrap around him and block out everything but them. To Steve’s dismay, Bucky let him go and pulled up the bed’s displays of his vitals instead.

“You up for it?” he asked as he looked over the charts. “Shuri was here around dawn, cleared the nanites out and said you’d be fine, but if you feel weird, you could take it easy. I felt kinda woozy for a bit after I had a round with them.”

Steve took stock: now that he wasn’t panicking or pretending not to panic, he noticed that he had color vision back, and what felt like his full range of hearing. There was no tightness or heaviness in his chest anymore now that he wasn’t panicking over nothing, no lightheadedness, and if he felt a little woozy, it was nothing some food wouldn’t fix. He felt good, actually. Better than he ever had before the serum the first time around, even if his back did still twinge and ache. He knew it wasn’t magic, but it sure as hell felt like it.

“I’m up for it, just need to eat something.”

Bucky nodded, and wrinkled his nose. “You need a shower too, buddy, no offense.”

“Yeah, yeah, didn’t exactly have any time to freshen up. We were on one of Thanos’s ships coming back, we couldn’t find any showers.”

“Well c’mon, the decontamination shower in the lab will do you for now, and I’ll get you some breakfast in the meantime.”

* * *

After a shower and a meal, Steve and Bucky headed to the Citadel, where the mood was an odd mix of giddy joy and solemnity, victory tempered with grief for those who had fallen in battle with Thanos’s Outriders. Lord M’Baku greeted them outside the rapidly filling throne room. Steve got an approving nod and a clap on the shoulder that nearly sent him sprawling. Bucky got a wide grin and a hug that lifted him off his feet.

“Put me down!” said Bucky, laughing, and Steve grinned to see it. He had no idea when that particular friendship had happened—Bucky just flushed and muttered something about Shuri’s meddling whenever Steve asked—but he was happy to see it anyway.

“Welcome back, White Wolf! You fought a valiant battle in the Spirit Realm, I hear!”

“It wasn’t exactly a battle, but yeah. Steve and the others did all the hard work.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Steve.

M’Baku’s face turned solemn again, and he turned back to Steve. Steve tried not to feel tiny. Everyone looked small next to M’Baku. Well, everyone except Thor.

“Thank you,” M’Baku told him. “I see that you paid a price for our victory.”

“Cheap at the cost,” said Steve, and M’Baku nodded.

“Come, the council will begin shortly.”

The teleconference went about as well as could be expected, given the extraordinary circumstances. The assorted world leaders and members of the World Security Council all looked visibly shaken up. There was no standard procedure for dealing with a planet-wide genocide being undone, and the first two hours were taken up with explaining just what, exactly, had happened at all, and Steve got the impression that if not for the overwhelming evidence of the couple days of chaos and the Avengers themselves, no one would have believed a damn word of their explanations. As it was, there were frequent interruptions from various overwhelmed world leaders. T’Challa and Rhodey did their best to keep the conference on track, and Thor video conferenced in from space to put his best kingly gravitas to work explaining the universe-wide implications of Thanos’ genocide.

Steve duly made his own report too, and ignored the shocked whispers and murmurs as everyone realized just who he was. That was gonna get real old, real soon. His eyes sought out Bucky, who was tucked away out of sight of most of the teleconference cameras where he was sitting among the Wakandans. When Bucky caught him looking, he rolled his eyes, then set his head at a cocky tilt and raised an eyebrow. _Fuck ‘em_ , was the general gist. Steve struggled to keep a grin off his face.

In the end, the giddy relief and euphoria of undoing such total devastation won out over the likes of General Ross’s anti-Avengers vendetta. The World Security Council agreed to suspend the Accords, despite General Ross’s objections, and tentative plans were made for dealing with the post-Decimation fallout. 

“A good start,” declared T’Challa, once the teleconference ended. “Suspending the Accords in light of the current emergency is the first step to renegotiating them.”

“Yeah, not bad. Though you know, I get the feeling they’re just happy it’s our dumb asses that have to deal with the crazy shit like Infinity Stones and Mad Titans,” said Tony’s hologram.

Steve snorted. Tony wasn’t wrong, and it was the reason why the Avengers, or something like them, would probably always exist.

“They want it both ways: to have enough control of us to feel like we’re their weapons to wield, but not so much that the real crazy shit is on them to deal with.”

“Harsh, but fair,” said Bruce with a wince.

“Okay, time for the press conference, team,” said Tony, grinning in an honestly sort of menacing way. “Last chance for a bathroom break! Get your best reassuring faces on and get ready to face the panicked press corps of planet Earth!”

“It’s too late to fake our deaths now, isn’t it,” Steve muttered to Bruce. Bruce just stared into the middle distance, face screwed up with effort.

“Do I look green at all? I think I can bail if it looks like the other guy’s about to make an appearance.”

“No one’s bailing,” said Sam. “And what the hell do you mean _fake your death_ , Steve?”

Steve watched as Bucky smiled and gave him thumbs up from across the throne room. Steve smiled back involuntarily at the goofy gesture, but the smile dropped off his face when Bucky got up to leave with M’Baku and the rest of the Wakandan council.

“You’re _leaving_?” hissed Steve as he grabbed Bucky’s arm on his way out.

“Gotta help Shuri with some stuff,” said Bucky, all wide-eyed innocence. “Also, I’m not an Avenger, and this is an Avengers press conference, so…”

Steve wasn’t fooled. This was exactly like how Bucky had managed to be mysteriously busy doing “very important Sergeant stuff” nearly every single time reporters wanted to talk to Steve and the Howlies on the Front.

“Aww, hell no, you’re an Avenger, Barnes. If that spider child is an Avenger, you’re an Avenger, and attendance at Avengers press conferences is _mandatory_.”

“Hmm, and yet, I don’t see the spider child at this press conference, Sam!” said Bucky, and Sam scowled.

“Friendship revoked! We’re frenemies again!”

“Quick, someone punch me, the Hulk doesn’t have to attend press conferences,” said Bruce urgently.

“Buck, I need moral support here!” tried Steve, but no dice.

“You’re all gonna do great,” said Bucky, so sincerely that it looped back around to being sarcastic. Sam made an incoherent noise of rage and Bucky grinned, then Bucky’s kimoyo bracelet chirped. “Yeah, see, I gotta go, see you at dinner!” and then he was jogging out of the throne room, his dumb, nice hair bouncing and swaying with the movement.

“Hey, back of the class!” called out Tony. “Stop making trouble and look sharp, we’re gonna be live in five, four…”

Steve took a deep breath, felt a little thrill when it didn’t catch, and squared his shoulders. For a moment, he missed the weight of the shield and the cover of the stars and stripes. He’d had nightmares not unlike this, once upon a time: anxiety dreams where he was left small and unarmed in battle, or in front of the masses. That fear seemed distant now, after Thanos.

Sam nudged him, and asked, “You ready, Cap?” nothing but calm certainty in his voice, and Steve knew he was.

* * *

By mutual, unspoken agreement, when it was time to turn in for the night after a long day of briefings and recovery efforts, Steve and Bucky both headed to Bucky’s room in the Citadel. Bucky didn’t use the room all too often, mostly preferring to stick to his cottage and small farm by the border, but he used it often enough that it felt more lived in than a hotel room or one of the Citadel’s other guest rooms, and it was where Steve stayed too when he and Bucky visited the Golden City. Sure there was only one bed, but it was an enormous one, and Steve didn’t like imposing on Wakanda’s hospitality even more than he already was. And anyway, neither of them minded sharing.

When Sam had found out about that arrangement, he’d given Steve an entirely unmerited look of disbelief. _Uh huh. Just bro things. Sure._

_Sam, we share a bed all the time. We shared a bed in that shitty hotel in Athens last week. Me and Bucky sharing a bed is just bro things, whatever that means._

_We are on the run and we don’t have unlimited money, you and Bucky are in a literal palace with hundreds of rooms, Steve. I bet you two cuddle, for god’s sake. Seriously man, make a fucking move already._

_When the time’s right._

Anyway, Steve hadn’t stepped foot in Bucky’s room in the Citadel, or inside Bucky’s border village cottage, since that first battle with Thanos. He’d known that if he had, he’d have collapsed onto Bucky’s bed to breathe in what was left of him, his scent and the memory of his warmth, and he wouldn’t have gotten back up again. The memory made Steve pause on the threshold of Bucky’s room.

“Steve?” asked Bucky, and Steve flinched. There was no fear in Bucky’s voice, but still— “If you want to stay somewhere else tonight, you can.”

“No, I want to stay with you. Please. If that’s okay with you.”

“Of course it is,” said Bucky, his eyes gone soft and a little worried.

As they got ready for bed, Bucky caught Steve up on what he’d been doing while Steve was stuck in meetings and press conferences: mostly helping Shuri get her lab back in order, and doing sweeps around the city’s shields with the Dora and Jabari warriors to check for any Outriders.

“Wish I’d been with you,” said Steve.

“Me too,” said Bucky, and Steve laughed as he got under the covers.

“Yeah? Don’t think I can take an Outrider on like this, but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Bucky frowned as he got in bed. “That’s not why. I just wanted you with me.”

Bucky did this sometimes, since coming out of cryo. Just blindsided Steve with some bit of devastatingly open honesty. He usually did it when he was tired or distracted, like he only had so much energy to spare for keeping up a protective filter for his words and feelings, and when that energy was gone or redirected, everything came out raw and artless, so sincere and unguarded that Steve almost wanted to demand that Bucky _be careful_. Sometimes it led to Bucky letting slip things he hadn’t quite meant to share, like how much his old metal arm had hurt him. Sometimes it was like this, though, some admission that broke and filled Steve’s heart in equal measure. Steve’s usual response was to manfully stifle his urge to hug Bucky, and instead he usually ended up making some stilted, half-assed admission of his own, which was bullshit. Steve knew he could do better, that he owed Bucky more.

“I missed you so fucking much,” said Steve, and scooted closer towards Bucky on the bed.

“Me too,” said Bucky, and he brought his hand up to Steve’s cheek, too brief, just a quick, glancing sort of touch like he was making sure Steve was really here, and maybe now Steve could, maybe Bucky would—but no, Bucky continued, “I knew you were alive, I knew we were all fighting to get back, so it should’ve just been like before, when you were out there being a renegade Avenger—”

“Secret Avenger,” corrected Steve, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

“Fine, when you were out there being a secret Avenger, and you were on radio silence for some mission, but—it wasn’t like that. Knowing I couldn’t call you, or anything. Knowing you thought I was dead. Again. It was just—hard.”

“Yeah,” whispered Steve. “It was hard for me too.”

“Yeah, I figured,” said Bucky, wry now. “You thought half the universe was dead. Don’t blame any of you for going a little crazy.”

“I think I went a lot crazy.” Steve summoned up something like his own version of Bucky’s raw honesty. “I can’t do it again, Buck. I can’t lose you.”

“Third time’s not the charm?” Bucky joked weakly with a tight grin, and Steve punched him on the shoulder.

“Bucky. I’m serious. I can’t. I’m just—I’m not gonna survive it, next time.” _I won’t want to_ , he didn’t say, because that would make Bucky really worry.

“Sorry,” whispered Bucky, his eyes gone wide and stricken. “I’m sorry, I should’ve—”

Steve shook his head. “Come on. It’s not your fault. Just—all these fucking wars,” he said, and his voice cracked.

The wars just got bigger and bigger, it seemed, became harder and dirtier, took more and more from him. Back when Steve was first trying to enlist, he’d thought he didn’t have much to lose, just a few years of life wracked by illness and dogged by poverty, so why not throw himself into a war and have his death mean something. He knew better, now, obviously. He knew just how much he could lose.

He couldn’t do it again.

Bucky gave him a long, searching look. “So you’re done.”

“I’m done,” said Steve, and the truth of it rang in him like a bell. He’d have been done even if he hadn’t lost the serum. “Are you?”

“Maybe,” said Bucky with a shrug, and that made Steve blink in surprise. “This kinda fight—felt different, I guess. Felt cleaner. I’d be okay doing it again, if it was necessary. If T’Challa asked.”

Steve understood, he did, but— “I hope he doesn’t.”

“Well, yeah, I’m not exactly eager for another invasion of genocidal aliens.”

They subsided into silence for a long moment then, then Steve asked, “Buck. What was it like for you? In the Soul Stone? Parker didn’t give us too many details, apart from that you looked after him and, uh, Groot.”

“Peter’s a good kid,” murmured Bucky, then grinned a little. “And Groot may be an alien tree, but apparently being a teenager is universal. Haven’t been on the other end of so many eye rolls and long sighs since my sisters, you know? Though I guess he doesn’t sigh so much as, like, rustle his leaves.”

“Had your hands full, huh?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Apart from that though. What was it like?” asked Steve, because he knew better now, he wasn’t going to let Bucky get away with a deflection or distraction the way he had after Azzano. Steve wasn’t just going to _hope_ Bucky was okay; he was going to make sure of it.

Bucky frowned, and his gaze went vague and distant, and when he spoke, his words came out slow and halting.

“Like a dream, at first. Like—like the last few minutes before everything stopped in the cryotube. When I felt like—nothing. A ghost.”

“You’re not a ghost,” Steve told him. He took hold of Bucky’s hands and squeezed, reassurance for the both of them. Bucky was real and solid again, flesh and blood and vibranium.

“I kind of was then, though.”

Steve swallowed hard, unable to find a denial that felt true. “Then what? Parker said you found him.”

Bucky shrugged and let go of Steve’s hands, to Steve’s dismay. “Eventually. Honestly, I really did think I was dreaming. Nothing else made sense. I mean, I watched myself turn to—so I thought—” Bucky stopped, shuddered, and scooted closer to Steve. “The elders, they’d taught me some things, for coming out of nightmares, you know? Taking control of a dream myself, changing things in it. So I tried them, and they sort of worked, but not the way they would have in a real dream.”

“That’s real smart, Buck,” said Steve, and Bucky shrugged.

“Hmm. Worked it out, eventually. That it wasn’t a nightmare, that something else was going on. That Thanos had done something, with those Stones. So I sent up a flare, sort of. And Dr. Strange found me, explained things. Though, Jesus, aliens are real, magic is real, what the fuck. A fucking _sorcerer_ , Steve, fuck’s sake.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah. And forget about sorcerers, when I first met Rocket, I really thought I’d finally lost it.”

“ _You_ thought you lost it? I saw that fucking talking raccoon on the battlefield with a giant machine gun, and he asked if he could have my arm.” Bucky shook his head and grinned. “Anyway, Strange told me to find as many people as I could, so…that’s what I did. Think you know most of the rest, from the meeting.”

Steve raised his eyebrows at Bucky, because that was decidedly light on details. “I want to know what it was like for _you_. Are you—are you okay?” he asked, because that was way more important than any declaration of Steve’s dumb feelings.

“You’re back, I’m back on Earth, we’re both alive, the world hasn’t ended, Wakanda’s safe…” Bucky listed, then he smiled, sweet and soft and deep enough to reveal the new creases at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, Steve. I’m okay.”

“This isn’t like after Azzano where you pretend you’re okay and I’m too dumb to notice you’re not?”

“I’m at my usual level of fucked in the head. Once things have settled down some, I’ll talk to Thandiwe and the other elders about everything, I promise. Are _you_ okay?”

“Shuri fixed me up, didn’t she?”

Bucky sighed. “Really not what I meant, pal,” he said wearily, but thankfully he didn’t push. Yet, anyway. “So if you’re done, what’re you gonna do next?”

This was it, this was his opening, thought Steve. He could be smooth. He could be sincere. He could tell Bucky he was in love with him. He could say _what I’m gonna do next is marry you, did you know that’s legal now, you probably do, let’s get married, right now_ —and what the _fuck_ , Rogers. How had he just gone from _confess my feelings, maybe_ to _marriage proposal_? Why was he so _extra_ , as Shuri would undoubtedly put it? This was why Steve had never, ever been able to get a date before the serum. Hell, he’d barely managed to talk to Peggy properly, he’d told her about all the alley fights he’d gotten into for god’s sake, and he’d asked Sharon out that first time when she had her arms full of laundry and if he was bringing that level of ineptitude to his relationship with Bucky now, he was _fucked_ —

“Steve?” asked Bucky, frowning in genuine concern. He rubbed Steve’s arm in comfort. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to know yet. You don’t have to be okay yet either. I oughta know better, really, it’s not like I knew what I was gonna do after I came out of cryo—”

Steve suppressed a hysterical laugh and patted Bucky’s hand.

“No, it’s fine, I’m fine, just—ask me after we get the Accords worked out.”

Yeah. After everything was settled. Then he’d do it, then he’d tell Bucky, and he’d be normal and sane about it instead of jumping immediately to a marriage proposal. Waiting until after everything with the Accords and the aftermath of the fight against Thanos was settled was for the best anyway. It would only be harder to leave Bucky otherwise. _I just wanted you with me_ , Bucky had said, and god, it would be hard enough to leave him after that. No use making it even harder.

He would wait just a little longer. Not like before, not years, just—a little longer. Just until he could finally stay with Bucky.

* * *

Steve ended up rejoining the Avengers in New York to handle the Thanos aftermath, and to get the Accords worked out once and for all. Bucky stayed in Wakanda. It was the best division of resources, and the safest choice for Bucky, and before he’d spent nearly six months thinking Bucky and half the universe were irrevocably lost, Steve would have had no problem with it.

After Thanos, Steve had a problem with it.

“I’ve gotta help out here, Steve.”

“Right.”

“And you’ve gotta do Avengers stuff.”

“I know.”

“So…you’ve gotta let me go. Your jet’s about to leave.”

Steve squeezed Bucky more tightly. Bucky was so warm, and he smelled so familiar, and he was solid, he was real and alive. He was not crumbling to pieces. Every single one of these facts felt like a miracle.

Instead of saying any of that, Steve just said, “Uh huh.”

Bucky sighed. Maybe Steve was crazy, but somehow, just from the sound, Steve knew Bucky was smiling.

“You weren’t like this when I first shipped out.”

“‘Cause I was a dumbass then.”

“Yeah, and here I was thinking I took all the stupid with me. Wilson, a little help here?” asked Bucky.

“Hey Steve? Bucky’s gonna be fine here. You can let him go, man.”

This was Sam’s soothing peer counselor voice, and Steve did not appreciate it. Sam was not supposed to use the professional peer counselor voice on him.

“Because things work out so great when I let him go,” Steve grumbled into Bucky’s chest.

Bucky sighed again, some exasperation in the sound now, but he hugged Steve more tightly. “Steve…”

“I’m glad you’ve apparently abandoned repression as a coping mechanism, but did you have to do it at such an inconvenient time?”

“How is that helping, Sam?” asked Bucky. “Some counselor you are. C’mon pal, it’ll be alright.”

“You don’t know that!” He finally stepped away from Bucky, and had to look down and away to avoid Bucky’s stupid, big concerned eyes. “I just got you back. I didn’t want to leave so soon,” he admitted.

He didn’t say: _I’m sick of leaving you. I’m sick of you leaving me._ Steve was pretty sure Bucky heard it anyway. Thankfully, instead of opening that can of worms, Bucky went with practical reassurances instead.

“We’ve got the marvels of modern technology, remember? It’s just like before, we can call and Skype. And the sooner you deal with all this, the sooner you can come back. If you want to, that is.”

“Of course I want to!”

“I just figured, maybe you’d want to stay in New York—”

“Oh my god, are you _kidding_ me with this—” groaned Sam.

“Sam!” Steve and Bucky both complained in unison, and Sam shut up.

“I’ll come back,” promised Steve, looking Bucky in the eye now. “I want—it can’t be like it was before the war, in Brooklyn, but maybe we can—I want to come back and stay. With you, if—”

Steve couldn’t finish his own damned sentence, but Bucky understood him anyway. _If you’ll have me. I want the war to be over, I want to come home, I want us to be a family again, whatever the hell that’s going to look like now, a century and two deaths later_ —Bucky, Steve was sure, understood all of that. It was all there in his eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Me too,” said Bucky, in the soft, rough murmur that meant he couldn’t trust his voice not to shake. “I’ll be here.”

They smiled at each other, bright-eyed.

Then Sam grabbed him by the back of his shirt and started bodily hauling him onto the jet. “I’ll call you when we land!” said Steve, and was rewarded with the precious sight of Bucky laughing and waving.

* * *

“That would’ve been a real touching moment for a declaration of love,” said Sam once they were on the jet.

“No, it would not. Also, historically, that hasn’t gone well for me. Kissing someone then getting on a plane, I mean.”

Sam groaned. “I cannot _believe_ you are still hanging on to all these _excuses_.”

“They’re not _excuses_ —”

“They’re excuses! You have been pining for literal decades! And alright, you had a good reason for holding off after your boy got defrosted, that was a good call, giving him some time and space to figure himself out. But the last few times you visited? _Now_? What the hell are you waiting for?”

“At the very least I’m waiting to tell him when I won’t be leaving again right afterwards. That seems like a mixed signal, don’t you think? I’m gonna do this when neither of us is about leave or be left behind.”

Sam sighed and looked at him, steady and kind, but ungentle.

“It wasn’t easy for us in the Soul Stone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you think you didn’t handle being left behind so great? Well, we didn’t handle doing the leaving so great either.” Sam sighed. “Just—remember that, when it comes to Bucky, okay?”

Steve straightened up in his seat. “Wait, did he tell you something? Is he, does he—”

“I am _not_ doing that grade school shit with you, nuh uh, use your damn words with each other. If the words ‘does Bucky _like me_ like me’ come outta your mouth, I’m gonna punch you, I don’t care if you’re all tiny now.”

“Oh, he’s _Bucky_ now, huh? You two actually friends now?” asked Steve with a grin.

He knew Sam and Bucky’s animosity wasn’t genuine dislike; they were like fractious brothers who liked to give each other shit. They had each others’ backs when it counted, and Steve thought their bickering was equal parts funny and exasperating. If their time together in the Soul Stone had turned them into genuine friends though, Steve sure as hell wouldn’t complain.

“We’re friend-in-laws,” said Sam, with an entirely straight face.

“That’s not a thing.”

“It’s a thing. We have the same best friend, that’s friend-in-laws. Real talk though, Steve. This whole thing sucked from both directions. Wrap up your Avengers shit fast, if you’re really planning to have your happily ever after with Bucky in Wakanda. None of us want to be separated from our people any longer than we have to be, you hear me?”

“Yeah. I hear you.” He studied Sam, and saw some of the same mix of desperation and relief in his eyes. “What was it like for you, in the Soul Stone? Me and Buck, I guess we’re used to...being kinda dead for a while then coming back. You’re not. You, uh, handling it okay?”

Sam leaned back in the jet’s seat with a huff of tired laughter. “Ask me that once things slow down, maybe. I’m kinda wondering if repression isn’t the way to go with crazy shit like this. Like, maybe there’s some things we’re not meant to know, you know? It’s already feeling like the kind of nightmare you have when you’ve got a fever.”

“Buck said he thought he was dreaming at first too.”

“I didn’t,” said Sam, mouth tight. “I thought I was dead. Thought I got taken out by something while I was in the air, just like Riley had, and you know the first thing I thought when I could think again was—well, at least now I know: it doesn’t hurt. It’s just like—fading.”

Steve offered his hand to Sam, and Sam took it, gripped it tight. “Sam, I’m—I’m sorry,” he said, and Sam shook his head.

“Nothing for you to be sorry for, man. Just—it was shitty, in the Soul Stone. At first, anyway. Thought I was in some kinda limbo, or hell, and I mighta lost it if I’d been alone in there. But then Bucky found me, and we found Wanda, and they were both real good at getting around and manipulating things in there. Wasn’t so bad, after that, apart from the general existential horror, I mean.”

“Yeah, we had the general existential horror on this side too.”

Sam huffed out a laugh and bumped Steve’s shoulder with his. “Thanks for getting us all out. We knew you would. Just wish it hadn’t cost you so much.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to laugh. “What, this?” he said, gesturing up and down his significantly smaller and more fragile body. “I only ever really got the serum so I could help, you know? Wasn’t exactly a trial to give it up if that was gonna be the thing that could help even more.”

He would miss the physical strength and skill the serum gave him, Steve wouldn’t deny that. But if he had his health, and Bucky, and his friends, he’d count himself lucky and be grateful the price for all of it was so low.

“Well, thank you anyway,” said Sam. “You’ve earned a nice retirement with your man and then some.”

“I’m not really sure it’s gonna be _retirement_ retirement, I don’t think I can just sit around doing nothing…” hedged Steve, vague and horrifying thoughts of shuffleboard and bingo flashing through his mind, then he played back the rest of what Sam had said. “And Bucky’s not my man.” Sam gave him the literal side eye and hummed dubiously. “Yet.”

“Whatever, I’ve done my part. You two idiots are on your own now. You can lead a horse to water....” grumbled Sam.

* * *

When they arrived at Avengers HQ, they were greeted by what was effectively a large campsite of reporters and media sprawling out around the grounds, and when the quinjet landed, Natasha was waiting for them on the runway. 

“Welcome back,” she said dryly. “Aren’t you glad we saved the world so that we can have a lot of meetings and hearings and interviews about exactly how we saved the world?”

Sam groaned. “Put me back in the Soul Stone.”

“We shoulda gone with Bruce’s faking our deaths plan,” said Steve. He counted a dozen news vans before he gave up even trying. “Is it too late for that now?” He coughed, unconvincingly, and clutched at his chest. “Can you tell them I just keeled over and died? I think I can feel my heart giving out.”

Sam looked at him like he was crazy, but Natasha laughed.

“Yeah, it’s too late to fake your death. C’mon, the faster we handle this—” She gestured vaguely at the whole damn mess of media and the Avengers HQ. “The faster you can get back to your honeymoon.”

“My what?”

“Your—did you _seriously_ not make a move?” asked Natasha. The surprise on her face was genuine and it quickly shifted to an exasperated disappointment that had Steve studiously avoiding her eyes.

“He did not,” said Sam.

“I wasn’t gonna make a move and then immediately leave again,” protested Steve. “And I don’t know why you’re both assuming that Bucky will, that he’s—”

“He _will_ , and he _is_ , seriously, I can’t believe you—”

“Steve,” said Natasha with exaggerated patience. “Literal aliens who don’t know anything about you two assume you’re already married to each other.”

“They do not.”

“Nebula did. Seriously Steve, what the hell are you waiting for? The next time you lose Bucky, you’re not likely to be lucky enough to get him back. None of us are immortal.” Natasha looked out at the Avengers Compound, her face gone tight and tired, then looked back at him, and at Sam. “If there’s one thing we should have learned after Thanos, it’s that. What’s the use of saving all of this, all of them, if not to—”

She stopped, her voice dipping low and breaking.

“If not to what?” prompted Sam, gentle, but by the time he finished the question, Natasha’s composure was back in place, and the smile she gave them was small and vulnerable, and wry about it. Which was Natasha all over: she’d show you her soft parts, and then she’d wrap you up in the secret she was sharing with you, equal parts velvet and barbed wire.

“Live _with_ them. Live in the world, instead of—whatever we’ve been doing. Slipping through it, fighting it, living on the edges.” She shook her head, as if to shake herself out of the sudden heaviness in the air between them. “C’mon. We stay out here much longer and some reporter’s gonna start getting ideas.”

They left the landing strip and headed inside the compound, and as they walked, Steve bumped up against Natasha’s shoulder.

“That what you’re gonna do, once we’re done? Live in the world?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I want to give that a try. No covers, no missions, ledger in the black.” She laughed, half terror and half joy, and in that one bare expression, she was more beautiful than she had ever been. “Who knows if I can pull it off.”

“You can,” Steve told her. “If any of us can, you can.”

* * *

That night, lying alone in a too-big, too-cold bed, Steve thought about what Natasha had said. Not the part about living in the world, though she’d been right about that. Even before becoming fugitives, doing what they did, Avenging—it wasn’t living _in_ the world, not really. It was being the guard dog roaming the perimeter of the house: they got to come inside sometimes, but never for long, and time spent looking longingly inside the golden warmth of the house was time spent not being on watch to guard it. They couldn’t afford it.

No, what was playing on a loop in Steve’s head were the words _the next time you lose Bucky, you’re not likely to be lucky enough to get him back._

The truth of those words raged through him faster than any fever, and left him just as weak and shaky.

The next time he lost Bucky, it would be for good. They were, surely, out of wild miracles by now. Bucky’s own impossible strength would falter eventually, or there would be no loophole to bring him back from the latest war, or maybe even dumb, cruel chance would have its way. Either way, it would be final.

Steve could just about handle that. Natasha had said it, they weren’t immortal, Steve knew that.

But what if he lost Bucky to something other than death? What if, finally, they grew apart? What if different wants proved a distance too great to bridge? Bucky loved him, Steve was past doubting that. But he’d always suspected that Bucky didn’t _want_ him, didn’t need him the way Steve wanted and needed him. Bucky may have promised him _to the end of the line_ once, but if that destination was to somewhere where they were more than just best friends, without fear or shame, he’d never let any hint of that want slip. No, this, Steve couldn’t help but fear, was where the tracks would split, taking them both to different ends of different lines, each of them alone.

If that was the way Steve finally lost Bucky for good, he would never forgive himself.

So what the hell was he going to _do_? With his life, with Bucky? The possibilities, good and bad, piled up in his head and made his heart race. No army, no war, no shield, no poverty, no looming illness—just him and Bucky, free of obstacles for the first time. He must have dreamed of this, before. Now that he had it, all he could feel was something like giddy panic at all the possibilities, and his heart raced and fluttered as if Shuri hadn’t fixed it at all.

His phone dinged with a message notification and Steve dived across the expanse of bed to grab it. It was nearing the small hours of the night here in New York, but it was morning in Wakanda. Bucky was awake.

The message was a photo: a goat perched on the roof of Bucky’s cottage, chewing on the thatching with a distinctly vengeful air. How the hell had it gotten up there?

A message followed: _the goats are back on their bullshit_ , it read, and Steve laughed.

_How’re you gonna get it back down? Wait, please film yourself getting it back down._

_Absolutely not. What’re you doing up anyway? Go to sleep, Steve_

_I’m trying_ , he texted back, then hesitated _._ Fuck it. _Hearing from you helps. Good night, Buck._

_Good night_

The messages from Bucky quieted his late night doubts and worries enough to let him sleep. After what felt like only seconds, he woke up abruptly, like he was crashing into consciousness. His heart pounded with some nameless, terrible dread, as if some weight was about to crush him, which was nothing new, since Thanos. What _was_ new was the delirious relief, the weight lifting: the nightmare had been undone, and here was the proof of it on his phone, with new messages from Bucky. One of the messages was a video, which, while it wasn’t exactly an adequate substitute for Bucky’s actual presence, was still enough to make Steve smile the moment it began playing.

Bucky’s expression was solemn, but his hair was wild and his eyes were merry, so Steve knew he was fine and probably about to tell Steve some bullshit.

“So you do _not_ need to know how I got that dumb goat down, because I’ve got this one last scrap of dignity I’m hangin’ on to, and the damned goats can’t have it, but I did get her back into goat jail—” Bucky turned his kimoyo bead’s camera to show a pen full of goats, most of them grazing placidly or napping in the shade. One of the goats was glaring balefully straight at the camera, looking downright murderous. “And I think she’s plotting my murder.”

The camera turned back around to show Bucky. “Anyway, things are fine here in Wakanda,” he said, then bit his lip, awkward uncertainty on his face. “Um, text me when you’re up? I—I, uh, wanna hear from you, if you—I get it if you’re busy though, I know there’s a lot to do, so—it’s fine if you don’t. I’d like it if you did, though, since—” he stopped himself with a sigh and a roll of his eyes, then smiled, wry and almost sad. “You probably know why. Um, anyway. Bye.”

Why the fuck had he ever left Wakanda, Steve thought frantically. He should have faked his death, he should have stayed with Bucky, he should be there to protect Bucky from murderous, roof-jumping goats—

There was a chime, then Friday’s voice floated out of the ceiling. “There’s a press conference scheduled to start in an hour, Captain Rogers, then meetings with the Department of Defense scheduled for the rest of the day. I’ve sent the schedule to your phone. Mr. Stark says your attendance is mandatory.”

Steve sighed. “I’m not a Captain anymore, Friday. Tell Tony I’ll be there.”

He texted Bucky. He wanted to say _I love you_ or _marry me_ or _fuck press conferences and briefings and responsibility, I’m coming back to you right now_. Instead he sent, _Please tell me that goat is next in line to become stew, I don’t want you to get murdered by an angry goat_ , and got up to face the day.

* * *

Steve got through about five minutes of the day’s first meeting before he wanted to laugh or cry or punch somebody. The press conference had been trying enough, but he didn’t fault the media for their fear and confusion. People were owed answers for what to them had been two days of terror and chaos. The bureaucrats and politicians though…

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Captain Rogers.”

“What loss?” asked Steve blankly.

Sam and Natasha and Wanda were at the other end of the conference room, he’d just gotten a good night text from Bucky so he was fine and all was well in Wakanda, Shuri had sent word that Vision lived in lines of preserved code, waiting to be embodied again…Steve had lost nothing. It was the greatest miracle in a life already full of them.

“The super-soldier serum, I mean. What a sacrifice to make,” said the man, shaking his head. Steve had no idea who he was. Some senator from some committee, white-haired and patronizing.

“It was no sacrifice at all,” Steve said, in his full Captain America voice, and felt some bitter satisfaction when the man was visibly surprised by that voice coming out of this body.

“Well. The world will certainly miss Captain America, Captain Rogers. Thank you for your service.”

“Who said there’s not going to be a Captain America anymore?” Steve demanded.

“Given your circumstances…”

Steve almost wanted to say he wasn’t giving up the shield at all, but petty spite wasn’t reason enough to get back in the fight. Not this time, anyway, not when he had Bucky waiting for him. Steve smiled at the senator, wide and sharp.

“I’m passing the shield on.”

The senator looked relieved, back on steady ground. “I’m sure we can find someone to—”

“To the Falcon.”

* * *

Tony sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Steve,” he said with exaggerated patience. “That’s the kind of thing you should, you know, maybe run by the team first. Preferably _before_ you give an impromptu moving speech about it in front of the press.”

“What, were we supposed to _vote_ on who should be the next Cap? I mean, it’s obviously gotta be Sam.”

“No take backs!” shouted Sam from the air. He was practicing flying with the shield already, with Rhodey in the War Machine armor firing the occasional repulsor beam at him that Sam ably deflected.

“Sam’ll need a new paint job on the wings,” said Steve, smiling as he watched them.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get Falcap set up.” When Tony was uncharacteristically silent for too long, Steve turned to look at him, and found Tony’s eyes on him, steady with rare solemnity. “So you’re really getting out for good, huh? Serum or no serum, you know you’ve still got a place here.”

“What, riding a desk?” asked Steve.

“If you want. But I was thinking more command and ops, or training.”

Before Thanos, Steve might have taken Tony up on the offer, because he saw it for what it was: one final olive branch, forgiveness and trust in equal measure. But now…

“Thank you, Tony. Really. But…it’s not that I’m getting out for good. It’s that I’m—I’m letting the war end. I’m going home.”

“To Barnes.”

“Yeah.”

“I figured. But take it from me, Steve. It’s not that easy.” Tony huffed out a weary laugh. “You know the number of times I thought I was done, how many times I put the suits away? There’s always a reason to get back in the fight.”

“I’ve gotta try, Tony.”

Tony nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I know. And you deserve a hell of a vacation at least. Just know, you can always come back.”

Tony’s words were gentle with his rare sincerity, and Steve knew they should have been a comfort. And yet they felt a little like a chain binding him to duty, to the wars he hoped to leave behind.

“Thanks,” Steve told him. “But I think I’m ready to be a civilian again.”

* * *

_Four weeks later:_

“Hey Cap, we’ve got it from here, how about you call it a night?” said Rhodey.

“I’m not Cap any more, you know. Haven’t been for a while,” said Steve. “Sam’s Cap now. And I’m good to keep going.”

“Damn straight I’m Cap now,” said Sam, straightening briefly from his slump at the conference table. “But seriously, you can call it a night. This is just budget and bureaucracy shit. Get some rest. You look like you could use it.”

The rest of the team murmured in agreement, and Steve rubbed at his eyes. The drag of exhaustion felt different in this body, exacted tolls from him that he felt keenly and quickly, compared to his super-serumed self. If he stayed up much later, he’d be borrowing energy from tomorrow, and from the rest of the week, and he’d already racked up a debt from earlier this week. It was getting pretty late.

Though they’d undone Thanos’s genocide, the two-day gap between the Decimation and what people were now calling the Return had more than enough fallout of its own. There was still a lot of cleanup to do thanks to those two days, and that was apart from getting the Avengers’ legal status settled once and for all. The endless meetings and hearings and press conferences had only just started dropping off after five weeks. With all that going on, Steve hadn’t much felt the loss of his supersoldier body, not yet. He didn’t need muscles to duke it out with politicians and the press, and thanks to Shuri’s work, he felt healthy enough. 

He did, however, need sleep. He couldn’t get by on three hours a night any more. He glanced at his watch: nearly midnight. Bucky would be waking up in Wakanda right about now.

“Yeah, okay. Fine,” he said, and pushed his chair back from the conference table. “You should all call it a night soon too, though.”

“After the conference call with the Chinese government,” Natasha promised.

“If I see you before 8 AM, I’m sending you right back to bed,” warned Tony, which was rich coming from him.

Steve held back any ill-advised comments about Tony’s age and how maybe he should be in bed too, and bid the team good night. The halls of the Avengers’ compound were mostly quiet this time of night, and Steve got to his quarters without seeing anyone else. Instead of going to bed, he headed straight for his tablet and called Bucky on Skype. Bucky answered after just a couple of rings.

“Hey Steve, what’re you doing up?”

Just the sight of Bucky relaxed tension Steve hadn’t even realized he was carrying. Bucky looked good, hair still damp from a shower and his eyes alight with his smile; he must have had a good night’s sleep. Steve matched Bucky’s smile, his mood lifting already even if his exhaustion didn’t.

“Hey Buck. I’m about to go to bed, just thought I’d call to see if you were up yet.”

Both of them knew why Steve was really calling: Steve wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d seen Bucky, alive and whole, and Bucky would spend his whole day worrying unless and until he’d spoken to Steve.

“Course I’m up, we rise with the dawn out here in the country,” said Bucky with a grin. “How’re things going? Still fighting the bureaucratic good fight?”

Steve caught him up, grateful again that Bucky was well out of it in Wakanda. He could have come to New York by now: a round of hasty pardons and medals had been issued to all the Avengers and associates who’d fought off Thanos’s armies and who’d helped to restore the universe. But Bucky had wanted to stay in Wakanda to help with the rebuilding and recovery there, and as much as Steve wanted Bucky with him, in arm’s reach for as many hours of the day as was feasible, he knew Bucky was doing more good in Wakanda then he could at Avengers HQ, where he’d just end up stuck sitting in on briefings and meetings.

By the time Steve finished his latest round of whining about paperwork, he yawned for so long that Bucky laughed.

“Go to sleep, Steve. You gotta rest up for your next bureaucratic battle.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Steve, through another yawn. “Hey, I think we’re getting close to finishing everything up here. I should be free and clear in a couple weeks. I’ll make _sure_ I’m free and clear in a couple weeks.”

“Oh good, you’ll be just in time to help me deliver some baby goats.”

“Wait, never mind, looks like there going to be a whole new set of stipulations to the Accords, it’s gonna be another four weeks—”

“Uh huh, sure, I know you’re just scared of the goats—” said Bucky, the video picture bouncing as he walked out of his cottage to go feed said goats.

“I’m not scared of your demon goats!” Steve protested, and Bucky’s smile deepened around his eyes, the morning sunlight bathing them in a light that turned them glacier lake blue, all the more striking against his tanned skin. Unrelatedly, Steve was really glad he had full color vision back.

“So be here in two weeks,” said Bucky, his voice gone sweet and low.

“I will be. Even if I have to flee the damned Avengers compound in the middle of the night.”

* * *

The moment the ink dried on the new and improved Accords, it took every ounce of Steve’s self-control not to just immediately flee the UN Headquarters in New York, head back to Avengers HQ, and start packing. He couldn’t, of course. Maybe he wasn’t Captain America anymore, but he still had to do this one last round of gladhanding and schmoozing for the sake of the Avengers and the new Accords.

On the plus side, a good half to two-thirds of the people in here didn’t recognize him now that he was back to being small Steve Rogers, so he could spend his time being a wallflower. At least he could until Natasha dragged him back into the thick of things. A disconcerting number of people treated him with the kind of hushed-voice sympathy that was reserved for the gravely ill. Natasha had to keep digging her fingernails into his arm to keep him from doing something he or the “well-wishers” would regret.

“They know I’m not dying, right?” he muttered to her.

“You might as well be, so far as they’re concerned. They’ve never really known or cared about this version of you. The real you, I mean.”

“And who’s that?”

“Steve Rogers, of course.” He raised an eyebrow at her, confused. “Just Steve Rogers. Not Captain Rogers, not Cap, not Captain America, not even that international fugitive vigilante who used to be Captain America.”

It had been a long, long time since he’d been just Steve Rogers. He wasn’t entirely sure he remembered how to be _just_ Steve Rogers. Natasha gave him a knowing, tired smile, a silent _yeah, it kinda sucks, doesn’t it?_

“No more covers,” she said, gently. They spotted a new cluster of politicians approaching, and she bumped him with her hip. “Go, I’ll take this crowd. Go talk to someone who won’t make you look like you’re about to start a brawl.”

Steve took the out and melted back into the crowd. He was about to find an out-of-the-way corner to text Bucky in—he was feeling desperate enough to wake Bucky up in Wakanda, even if a grumpy, just-woke-up Bucky would probably just send him a series of indecipherable emojis—when someone took his arm.

“You look like a man plotting an escape,” said Nakia with a conspiratorial sort of smile. She was as luminously lovely as always, and his face warmed with a flush he couldn’t blame on the champagne he’d had an hour ago.

“I’m not so good at parties.”

“I’m not certain this counts as a party. Not the fun sort, anyway.”

Nakia guided him towards where T’Challa appeared to be gracefully extracting himself from a crowded conversation, and as if it had been choreographed, Nakia snagged T’Challa into their orbit, releasing Steve from her gentle hold as she took her place at T’Challa’s side. They moved with a comfort and certainty in each other that made Steve ache with something between want and jealousy.

“Bucky tells me you will soon be joining us in Wakanda,” said T’Challa.

“Oh, uh, yes! I will. That is, if—that’s okay?”

Bucky had said it was, but it occurred to Steve that the offer of sanctuary and safety that T’Challa had extended to Bucky might not extend to Steve, now that he was no longer an international fugitive making the occasional, furtive visit. Bucky, after all, had official asylum in Wakanda. Steve was just the guy who showed up every so often to bum around on his farm, and to check in with T’Challa about whatever the latest global threat was.

T’Challa just looked puzzled by Steve’s question.

“Of course it is. I have told Bucky more than once, he has a home in Wakanda. Which means _you_ have a home in Wakanda, obviously.”

“We—or I—don’t want to impose—”

Nakia made a dismissive noise. “That’s very polite, but I think we are past such formalities.”

“We’ve gone into battle for the fate of the universe together,” said T’Challa wryly. “We are certainly past such formalities. Wakanda has room for two old soldiers, Steve. And I’m sure you and Bucky are happy to no longer be separated by circumstance. Especially after…well, this most recent, almost permanent separation. I know how difficult it can be to be separated from your beloved,” T’Challa exchanged a warm glance with Nakia.

_Beloved?_ thought Steve. Maybe this was a translation issue…? Had Bucky told them something? Did best friend mean something different in Wakanda? Or was Steve just that obvious? Now probably wasn’t the time to ask, was it.

Anyway, it wasn’t as if T’Challa was wrong about him and Bucky being happy to get a chance to just live again, together, with no fresh disaster looming and no mantle of duty weighing them down. Steve didn’t much care where they lived, Wakanda or Brooklyn or even back in that rundown apartment in Bucharest; Steve would go wherever Bucky felt safe, wherever he _was_ safe.

“It’s been literally a century, yeah,” said Steve, and wished for some more champagne to wash away the lump in his throat. “But I know there are political considerations, and if Bucky and me being in Wakanda makes things difficult for you or your people…”

“It’s considerably less difficult now that neither of you are fugitives, Steve. Giving you and Bucky a home in Wakanda is something of an experiment, yes, but I think it is one Wakanda will benefit from. One Wakanda has _already_ benefited from, in truth.”

“Not sure fighting Thanos’s armies in Wakanda ought to count, really. We kinda brought that fight to your doorstep.”

“I was thinking of how Bucky is doing in Wakanda, actually. He’s quite the model citizen.” There was a kind smile on T’Challa’s face, but the look in his eyes was shrewd. “I doubt Wakanda will wholly open its borders in our lifetimes. I am willing to be bold, not foolhardy. But the foundation I lay now for a more open, inclusive Wakanda must be strong. Welcoming you two is a part of that.”

_No pressure,_ thought Steve and tried not to grimace. “It’s an honor, Your Highness. I won’t let you down,” he said, because the moment seemed to demand some formality.

T’Challa’s smile deepened. “I don’t see how you possibly could,” he said, which was very kind of him, but also definitely proved that he wasn’t super familiar with just-Steve-Rogers yet. Maybe T’Challa did notice some of Steve’s worry because he added, “You don’t need to do anything special, I’m not roping you into any grand plans or politics, don’t worry.”

Nakia elbowed T’Challa lightly and grinned at Steve. For all that her expression was friendly, there was a sharpness in her eyes that reminded him of Natasha. They were both spies, he remembered, and that meant she was almost certainly playing a longer and deeper game than this light conversation was letting on.

“What he means is, you and Bucky are meant to be a quiet example of how Wakanda as we know it won’t disappear if we let a few white people in,” she said.

“So Wakanda is starting to take in more people?”

“Yes, we are beginning to offer sanctuary to those who most desperately need it. But we are going slow and taking the geopolitical considerations into account too,” said T’Challa.

“If that is something you’re interested in helping with…?” Nakia trailed off and raised her eyebrows hopefully.

“How so?”

“Wakanda is seeing a steady, if slow so far, trickle of enhanced people seeking sanctuary,” explained Nakia. “Some think our advanced technology can help them with their abilities, others simply think, not incorrectly, that we will protect them from being exploited or captured by unsavory organizations or governments. Such people could use an advocate on the global stage, Mr. Rogers, especially an advocate who is as well-known and well-respected as you are, and who knows something of what such people are going through.”

“It’s only a suggestion,” added T’Challa. “Nakia is forever attempting to recruit people for her projects. I’m sure you have your own ideas on what to do next, now that you have passed on the shield to Sam.”

It was kind of T’Challa to say that, rather than _now that you’re not super-powered anymore_. It was also kind of him to assume Steve had any goddamn idea what he was going to do next. Right now, he didn’t have much of a plan beyond “spend time with Bucky” and “catch up on sleep” and “confess my feelings to Bucky and hope I’m not ruining our friendship.” Nakia’s suggestion sparked some interest, but he was wary of this ending up as another round of being a dancing monkey.

“I’ll think about it, thank you.”

* * *

“You’ve got a plan for making your big gay love confession to Bucky, right?” asked Sam from his position sprawled across Steve’s bed. He was taking up all the bed real estate that wasn’t already taken up by neat stacks of clothes and Steve’s open duffel bag.

Sam claimed he was here to help Steve pack, but thus far, his sole contribution on that front was to fish out some old sneakers from under the bed and throw them in Steve’s duffle. Meanwhile Steve was stuck sorting through and setting aside an entire dresser’s worth of clothes that no longer fit him. He wondered if he should take them anyway. They’d fit Bucky, probably, and waste not, want not.

“Kinda,” said Steve vaguely. “I might, you know, wing it.” This earned him an unfairly skeptical look. “What? I can wing it!”

“Hmm, okay, well, just a suggestion: this is actually the kinda conversation that could benefit from having a script in mind.”

“What are you getting at, Sam? I thought you didn’t do the counselor thing with your friends.”

“This isn’t me doing the counselor thing, this is me doing the get-your-shit-together friend thing. Just think about it for me, okay? You’ve got a chance now, to say what you have to say to Bucky, to figure out what you’re gonna do now that your war’s over.”

Both of those things seemed impossibly huge to Steve: how could he tell Bucky one fraction of what he felt? How was he going to fill the years that now stretched ahead of him? This was what people called a mid-life crisis, wasn’t it. Or maybe it was the long-delayed aimlessness of youth, now that he finally had the luxury of time. Whatever, he’d figure it out. He had to.

“Is ultimate fighting still on the table?” he asked, and Sam laughed.

“Not really the kinda plans I meant. I wouldn’t bet against you, that’s for sure. You can take as long a break as you need to to figure all of it out though.”

Steve flopped back on the bed with a gusty sigh, dislodging stacks of shirts. “That makes me feel like a shiftless twenty year old.”

“Nah, you’re a hundred-something year old retiree, Rogers. Plus you just helped save half the universe. Take a victory lap or something. Or hell, you can get away with doing some weird shit in your retirement. Cultivate a bizarre hobby, make really niche art, finally learn how to cook...”

“Hmm. Maybe I’ll become president of the Captain America fan club. That new Cap’s a big improvement on the old one, after all.”

“Damn straight I am.”

Steve grinned up at the ceiling, but something Sam had said pricked at him.

“Hey Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“You said my war’s over. What about yours?”

Sam sucked in a slow, thoughtful breath. “That’s not what being Cap is gonna be about, for me. My war’s _been_ over, Steve. It’s been over since I came back to the States with Riley’s coffin. You and me, our wars were different, you know? And I was Pararescue.”

“So that others may live,” Steve murmured.

Sam was a formidable fighter both in the air and on the ground, but first and foremost, he was Pararescue. He wasn’t a blunt weapon like Steve, or a secret weapon like Natasha: he was the last-chance rescue, the miraculous save, the guy who staunched the bleeding and got you to safety. Sam was Pararescue through and through, whether that was the kind of rescue that happened in VA meeting rooms, or the kind that protected people from invading aliens. Sam would be who he was with or without a war, with or without the shield. Steve wasn’t so sure about himself.

“Yeah. Hey, no judgment, okay? We all serve for different reasons, and your war needed you to do what you did. It just means me being Cap…it’s gonna be different. I’ve got different reasons than you did. And I’m not super-powered, so I’m gonna have to be a little smarter than just throwing myself at problems.”

“You’re a better man than me, Sam.”

Sam squirmed on the bed, as if the praise made him physically uncomfortable. “Aww, Steve, no I’m not—”

“Yeah, you are. I know it’s not gonna be easy, but…I hope you remember that when assholes say shit about you not being the real Cap.”

“You already gave me a passing the legacy on speech that made me cry, you don’t have to do it again,” muttered Sam, and aimed a flailing kick at Steve. “Just—think about what I said, okay?”

“I’m not sure what you _did_ say.”

“That you should grab onto your happily ever after, you and Bucky. No more excuses, no more waiting.”

“Alright, I hear you. I just—I want to do right by Bucky, for once. I haven’t always been good at that.”

Sam sighed, as if he wanted to refute that, but instead he just said, “You’ve got time now.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

When Steve arrived in the Golden City, he was greeted by a kind, if harried, palace official who handed him a set of kimoyo beads and directed him to a waiting hovercraft.

“The King welcomes you to Wakanda,” he said. “He will call upon you once you are settled.”

The official gave him some quick instructions for keying his kimoyo beads, tossed his bags in the hovercraft, then sent him off, all in a brusque and efficient manner that reminded him pleasantly of every unimpressed NCO who’d ever chivvied him along to whatever meeting he was supposed to be attending. Compared to all Steve’s previous visits, variously under clouds of either subterfuge and/or disaster, this unfussy reception was more than welcome.

The hovercraft was pre-programmed with its destination, so Steve spent the trip to Bucky’s cottage fiddling with the new kimoyo beads and wondering what he should tell Bucky and when. Maybe he should just kiss Bucky, first thing. That was the kind of thing they did in movies, right? If Steve did just lay one on Bucky though, no end credits would roll: he and Bucky would only be left to actually address what came after a dramatic kiss. Maybe Sam had a point about preparing a script.

He still hadn’t decided what to do when the hovercraft deposited him just outside the familiar Border Tribe village, where someone was waiting and waving in greeting. Not Bucky, since Steve hadn’t told him exactly when he’d be arriving—an automatic habit to maintain no longer necessary opsec—but a Wakandan woman. She helped him with his bags, chatting in Xhosa too fast for Steve’s limited fluency to catch, then she hopped on the vehicle and flew off with another wave. Steve really hoped he hadn’t just let someone steal a palace hovercraft.

In the heat of midday, there weren’t too many villagers outside. The few who were waved to him amiably enough, so maybe Bucky had told them to expect Steve. The thought made feel Steve inexplicably shy: what had Bucky told them? What would they expect of him here? He’d met many of them already on his earlier visits to Bucky, but he’d been a visitor and a guest then. Now he was something else. The thought gave him something like first day of school jitters. He shook the feeling off and hefted his bags onto his shoulders, and started the short walk to Bucky’s cottage by the lake.

It didn’t take long before he was feeling the heat, sweat trickling down his forehead and his back. He had to take a break a couple times, setting his bags down in the dirt when his arms and back ached too much. His face was probably as red as a tomato by now, and his shirt undoubtedly showed growing sweat stains. Great first impression to make on Bucky, thought Steve with a wince. It wasn’t as if Bucky hadn’t seen him looking considerably worse though, so he kept going, until Bucky’s cottage was in sight. Bucky himself was outside, tying up some bundles of hay, and as Steve watched, Bucky turned and caught sight of him. The vibranium of his left arm gleamed as he waved, its gold seams flashing bright in the sunlight, and then he was jogging towards Steve.

For one terrible moment, Steve’s traitorous brain battered him with the memory of Bucky crumbling to dust. With one ragged gasp, Steve shoved the awful memory down and focused on the Bucky of here and now: his messy long hair, his broad shoulders, and best of all, his smile, big enough to make his whole face crease up with joy. Was this the part where Steve was supposed to drop his bags and run into Bucky’s arms for a kiss? Steve was already feeling kinda short of breath, but he could manage at least a jog, and then he’d—he’d hug Bucky? Kiss him? Steve was back to being nearly a foot shorter than him, he’d have to pull Bucky down into a kiss, or maybe just sort of…climb him and then—

“Hey! You shoulda told me when you got here, I’d’ve come to meet you!”

Before Steve knew it, Bucky was pulling him into a loose embrace, and Steve had missed his window for a dramatic kiss. Whatever, it was fine. A dramatic kiss was probably a bad idea anyway. Just because Bucky was okay with hugs didn’t mean he’d be okay with a kiss, so Steve just leaned into the hug instead. Even with how the hay clinging to Bucky’s pants made Steve’s nose itch, and even with the clean salt smell of Bucky’s sweat, stepping into Bucky’s embrace felt like the best kind of homecoming.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “Took one of those hover thingies here.”

He tried not to slump in Bucky’s hold, but he didn’t much succeed. The weeks of not enough sleep were catching up with him with abruptness, and the warm air of a Wakandan afternoon combined with the heat of Bucky’s body felt nearly as good as a heated blanket, or a hot bath. And on top of that, it was only now sinking in: Steve was, for the first time in a long, long time, almost entirely free of any responsibilities.

Though they’d long since passed the point of plausible bro hug deniability, Bucky didn’t let him go, so Steve stayed in his arms just a little longer, let Bucky hold him up. Finally, Bucky let him go.

“Been a long few weeks for you, huh?” he said, equal parts gentle and teasing.

Steve winced. “Been a long few _months_ ,” he said, surprised to find his voice cracking.

“Yeah,” said Bucky, still so gentle. “You’ve earned a break, pal.” For once, Steve wouldn’t argue. Bucky tilted his head and looked down at Steve, and Steve’s heart stuttered under the familiar mix of fondness and keen attention. “So, is this a sabbatical or retirement?” asked Bucky.

“Retirement,” Steve told him. He narrowed his eyes when Bucky didn’t seem especially moved by this pronouncement. “I told you, I gave Sam the shield.”

“Captain Birdmerica,” murmured Bucky, and Steve snorted. “Wait, I gotta text Wilson that. And make some memes go viral.”

“Okay, sure,” said Steve, deciding it was not his problem. “And…I’m serious, I’m _retiring_ , I’m retired.”

“Alright, you’re retired.”

There was a hint of something in the curve of Bucky’s crooked smile, some sadness or resignation, that suggested he didn’t entirely believe Steve. Anger flared up in him at the too-familiar look, and with a shock of sudden memory, Steve placed it: it was the same look on Bucky’s face as when Steve had told him, after a second 4F, _I’ll stop trying to enlist_. And the odd tonelessness of his words, that was familiar too. It was just like when Bucky had asked him for a promise, after he’d gotten out of cryo. _Promise me that when you’re about to throw yourself into whatever war comes next…_ when, not if. Bucky hadn’t believed him. And why should he? After all, Steve hadn’t stopped trying to enlist, and Bucky hadn’t been wrong when he’d said _it always ends in a fight_.

Steve’s anger blew out faster than a birthday candle. 

He was supposed to do _right_ by Bucky, this time. No more war, no more fighting. No more leaving each other behind.

“I’m retired,” Steve said again, vehement now. “I’ll prove it.”

The beginnings of a plan took shape in Steve’s mind, as clear and simple as a tactical frontal assault. He’d _prove_ to Bucky that this was it, he was staying: Steve was retired from the fighting game, Steve wasn’t going to let anything keep pulling them apart. Maybe then when Steve finally told him he loved him, Bucky would believe him.

Bucky, evidently unaware of Steve’s epiphany, just gave Steve a quizzical eyebrow furrow.

“Okay, but you don’t have to prove anything,” he said, then grabbed the bags Steve had unceremoniously dropped in the dirt in favor of hugging Bucky, and started carrying them to the cottage. Steve didn’t bother protesting; it really was hot out, and he’d used up his store of stubbornness in schlepping the damned bags here from where the jet had dropped him off in the village. “What’re you gonna do during this retirement, anyway?”

The light of Steve’s big epiphany dimmed. Goddammit.

“I...have no idea.” Bucky started pointedly whistling “The Star Spangled Man with a Plan” song, and Steve groaned. “Quit it, I’m officially no longer star spangled.”

“And, clearly, you are not the man with a plan either,” teased Bucky, and Steve sighed.

“I’ll have a plan soon,” he insisted. He had a plan _already_ , it was just..light on the details, maybe. And missing a step or two. It was fine, Steve would figure it out, he could wing it.

“Okay, well, can I suggest a plan for today?”

“Yeah.”

“Take a nap—”

“I don’t need a nap—”

“Take a _nap_ , ‘cause that’s what retired people and cranky jet-lagged Steve Rogerses should do, then come to the village kitchen with me for dinner so you can meet everyone properly, and then you should sleep for another twelve hours straight. We’ll see if you’ve got a plan by then.”

Steve was inclined to protest out of sheer contrariness, but as he followed Bucky into the small cottage and then the bedroom, the sight of Bucky’s bed overcame any urge to bicker. Bucky pushed him gently towards the bed, and Steve took his shoes off and sank down onto it. The sheets were cool and soft, and the bed smelled like fresh laundry and Bucky. It was heavenly. Steve face-planted into the bed with a relieved groan, then took a deep whiff of the pillow. That was weird, probably, but just now, the sweet smell of whatever it was that Bucky put in his hair felt like everything he’d fought Thanos for: home and rest and safety.He could hear Bucky puttering around, the shuffle and thump of him setting Steve’s bags down.

“You okay with sharing?” asked Bucky, and there was something almost too casual in Bucky’s tone that made Steve’s spine tingle with suspicion.

He rolled over on his side to look at Bucky. “Yeah, I’m okay with sharing,” he said, because he _was_ okay with it and it wasn’t a big deal, and anyway, he’d sleep better, knowing Bucky was alive and solid and not at all dissolved into a pile of dust. Besides, Bucky would suspect something was up if Steve said he wasn’t okay with it. So Steve was just going to have to be okay with it. “Are you?”

“Sure,” said Bucky, still breezy in a way that Steve associated with Bucky covering up some nerves.Before Steve could pry, he continued, “What the hell is all this stuff you brought, anyway? It’s been like a couple months, did you go on a shopping spree for two wardrobes’ worth of new clothes?”

“It’s my old stuff. Figured it would fit you, so I just brought it along.”

Bucky opened the duffel and pulled out a gray shirt, then a blue one, eyeing both of them dubiously.

“I’m not so sure it _will_ fit me, pal. All your shirts were about two sizes too small for you as it was.”

“So they’ll be a little big on you,” Steve shot back, and Bucky chucked one of said shirts at him.

Steve’s joke wasn’t exactly on the mark, but there was some truth to it. Bucky had shed some of his bulk and muscle after being in cryo and training less strenuously in Wakanda. Steve studied him, tried to gauge whether Bucky had lost any weight he could ill afford to lose. But no, Bucky seemed to be at his preferred level of muscle mass: well above the welterweight leanness of his early twenties, but not nearly so bulky as his enhanced physique could get with dedicated training. Steve was about to make a dumb joke about Bucky letting himself go, when Bucky stripped off the shirt he was wearing to try on Steve’s.

He got a brief view of Bucky’s very tan, very muscled torso and its scattering of dark hair, before Bucky had Steve’s old shirt on.

“Okay, yeah, see, if this thing is tight on me now, it was a damned second skin on you when you were a beefcake.”

Bucky squinted down at his chest, frowning. Steve’s mouth went dry. The shirt was...yeah, it was tight on Bucky. Was this how shirts had looked on Steve? It can’t have been. Because it clung to every muscle, outlining Bucky’s trim and lean waist, his broad chest and shoulders, and oh no. No, Steve really hadn’t thought this whole thing through at all.

“It looks fine,” said Steve, totally normally. He very determinedly kept his eyes on Bucky’s face.

Bucky put his hands on his waist and gave Steve an unimpressed look. The pose only drew Steve’s attention back to Bucky’s chest. This, thought Steve with faint hysteria, was worse than when Bucky had, seemingly overnight, gone from looking like an awkward, chubby-cheeked adolescent to looking like he’d stepped right off of some film reel.

“If I flex, it’s gonna rip,” said Bucky, and Steve really, really wanted to say _please do_. “How the hell did you wear this shit all the time? Who told you this was your size?”

“Listen, do you want the clothes or not, because if not, you can just donate them or something.”

Bucky sighed, as if him looking like some kind of Adonis in form-fitting shirts was a goddamn trial. And yeah, sure, it was, but only to _Steve_.

“No, it’s fine, I guess,” said Bucky. “I like the Wakandan style clothes and all, but sometimes I feel like I’m playing dress up in them. Did you bring jeans?” Bucky bent over to rifle through the bag.

Steve had made a terrible mistake. Yes, he’d brought his old jeans. Bucky was thicker in the waist and thighs than Steve used to be, and if Bucky wore Steve’s old jeans, Steve was gonna be in trouble. So much trouble.

“Yeah, but, actually, those might not fit you, come to think of it—” Steve tried.

Too late, Bucky was already kicking his boots off and hopping out of his worn khaki cargo pants. Steve determinedly kept his eyes above Bucky’s waist. Bucky tugged the jeans on, and at any other time, Steve would have found the way he was hopping and wriggling to be enormously entertaining. Now, Steve was trying very hard not to look at any compromising parts of Bucky’s really very excellent anatomy.

“Someone used to skip leg day, I see,” said Bucky, and frowned down at the jeans. They were, god, really tight. Tight in ways that demonstrated that Bucky very much did not skip leg day. The denim strained against his thighs, and if Bucky turned around, Steve was going to die. He knew Shuri had fixed his heart, but still, it was gonna give out, Steve was sure of it.

“Maybe, uh—” Bucky crouched in the jeans, testing their give. Steve cleared his throat desperately. “Maybe they’re not so great for, you know, doing farm work.”

Bucky snorted. “You think? Maybe if I have a hot date in the city,” he said, then immediately flushed bright red. Which was. Interesting.

“You, uh, have any of those lately?” asked Steve in what he really hoped was a casual voice. His heart felt like it was making a concerted effort to leap out of his throat.

Bucky’s flush didn’t fade. “No. No, I—who would I even—”

Steve plowed ahead. “Is there...someone? Uh, a girl, I mean. Or a guy! You could—I mean, if you—there’s nothing wrong with—” Bucky’s eyes went very wide, and Steve shut both his mouth and his eyes, mortified.

“There isn’t anyone,” said Bucky, his voice soft and rough. Steve opened his eyes again and saw that Bucky’s expression was inscrutable, though his cheeks were still faintly pink. “Is—are you—I should’ve asked, is Sharon—”

“No, that was—” Steve laughed, and it came out sounding way too high-pitched and nervous. “That was only ever a kiss, Buck. Just—just a could have been, you know? No hard feelings between us or anything.”

“Oh. Right,” said Bucky.

He looked down, hair covering his face, and began pulling the jeans back off and putting his own pants back on. To Steve’s mingled appreciation and horror, he did not take the shirt back off. The shirt’s gray color brought out the slate gray in Bucky’s eyes, and contrasted nicely with the dark vibranium of his left arm. Steve really, really should have thought this through more. Steve’s tentative plan was not going to survive the conditions of Bucky walking around looking like that.

“The shirt looks good,” blurted out Steve into the awkward silence. “On you, I mean. It looks good.”

“Thanks,” said Bucky, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. “And uh, thanks for the clothes, farm work’s way rougher on clothes than I’d expected. Turns out goats really do eat everything.”

“No problem.”

Before another awkward silence could descend, Bucky’s kimoyo bracelet chimed. “Okay, I gotta go, you remember where everything is, right? You need anything before I leave?”

Deja vu hit Steve with abrupt and disorienting force. It could’ve been 1938 again, with Steve recovering from some sickness or another, Bucky checking in one last time before he headed out to work, and Steve determinedly, desperately trying to hide and push down anything that could be sexual attraction to his best friend.

“No, I’m good,” said Steve.

Bucky smiled at him, a quick, white flash of a grin, and something in Steve shivered happily at the sight, at how easy the smile sat on Bucky’s face.

“Alright, I’ll be back soon.” Bucky paused, bit his lip. “I’m really glad you’re here,” he said, and rushed out before Steve could return the sentiment.

He listened to Bucky leave. Only when he was sure Bucky had to be out of even super soldier hearing range did he groan into the pillow in mingled frustration and mortification. His nascent plan wasn’t going to survive long if he couldn’t keep his feelings in check. _C’mon Rogers, you’ve handled it for this long, you can handle it for a little longer._

He could wait, he told himself. He was going to make sure Bucky knew, first and foremost, that Steve could commit to a life without the fight, a life Bucky could feel safe in sharing with him. That was what mattered, not what Steve’s dick thought about Bucky’s strong body and not how Steve’s heart squeezed with the careless grace of the way Bucky swept his hair back. Even if…even if Bucky ended up not returning his feelings, at least Steve could prove to him that they could be something like family again, that they could come home from the war.

Maybe Steve could try art again, he thought. He was wildly out of practice, but maybe the University of Wakanda had classes, or he could do a correspondence course. Or maybe he’d help Bucky with the farming, or do something like what Nakia had suggested...the possibilities ran through his head slower and slower as the soft bed dragged him down into sleep.

* * *

Steve woke slowly to find Bucky sitting up beside him, reading something on a tablet. The air inside the bedroom was cool—the cottage’s temperature control must have kicked in—but the bed was warm enough that Steve considered dozing off again. The idea of it felt like an unearned luxury, or maybe a precious gift he hadn’t earned, instead of the much-needed rest it actually was. Steve could rest, and Bucky would be here, close enough to touch. Steve sighed with something like relief, which probably clued Bucky in that he was awake already. Bucky just kept reading though, and he didn’t look up, so Steve took the opportunity to get a good look at him and gauge his mood. 

As far as Steve could tell, Bucky was having a good day. He didn’t always, Steve knew. But he thought—he hoped, anyway—that lately Bucky was having more good days than bad. Today was one of the good days. Bucky’s hair was tied back into a disheveled bun, giving Steve a clear view of his calm and relaxed expression, his face lacking any of the telltale tension of unhappiness. He was tired, maybe, still not getting as much sleep as he should, but he wasn’t gaunt or drawn looking. He was focused on whatever he was reading, and focused avidly at that, his eyes clear and untroubled.

Bucky was still wearing Steve’s old shirt. That didn’t have anything to do with Bucky’s mood, not really, but Steve noticed it anyway. Steve really didn’t want to examine the thrill it gave him too closely. The satisfaction he got out of seeing Bucky in his old clothes felt too charged, and he couldn’t get over the feeling that he was being weird about it. He was definitely being weird about the way Bucky was idly worrying at his lower lip with his teeth. It was nothing but a tic of Bucky’s concentration, and yet here Steve was, having a sudden and detailed fantasy about kissing him, about feeling those lips on his.

It was just sexual frustration, Steve told himself. He could handle it. It had been a long, long time since that awkward kiss with Sharon, that was all. He gave up on dozing off again and shifted to sit up on the bed, peering at whatever Bucky was reading on his tablet. Whatever it was, it was in the Wakandan alphabet.

“Is it almost time for dinner?” asked Steve.

“Yeah, in half an hour or so,” said Bucky, and set down his tablet. “You’ve got time to wash up before then.”

Steve groaned. “Shit, I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

“Seems like you needed it,” said Bucky with a smile. He got up from the bed and lifted his arms to redo his bun. God, why had Steve worn such small shirts? The shirt Bucky was now wearing rode up to reveal a couple inches of his flat abdomen and it was somehow the most arousing thing Steve had seen in literal months. His skin was tan, Steve couldn’t help but notice. Did that mean Bucky just wandered around outside shirtless? If so, Steve wasn’t sure he’d be able to stick to his plan at all. “C’mon, let’s get going. Khanya’s on dinner duty tonight, you’re in for a treat.”

* * *

The communal kitchens were one of Steve’s favorite things about Wakanda. In the Golden City, they were like cafeterias or mess halls, only with far better food than Steve had ever found in any other mess hall he’d eaten in.

Here, in a smaller village, the communal kitchen was just that: one big kitchen, open for all to use. T’Challa had explained to Steve that the communal kitchens were meant to both ensure that none of Wakanda’s citizens ever went hungry, for no money or trade goods ever changed hands in a communal kitchen, and to reduce food waste. The system worked well, apparently: Wakanda’s communal kitchen program was nearing its five hundred year anniversary. There were still restaurants and food stands and home kitchens, but the communal kitchens and their attached dining halls were there for everyone regardless of their means or cooking ability, and everyone contributed to running them. Now that Steve was living here, rather than just a guest visiting for a week here and there, he’d be expected to pull his weight in the kitchen too.

“Volunteer yourself for a shift in the kitchen before someone volunteers you,” said Bucky on their way there, then gave him a sidelong frown. “Maybe stick with chopping and peeling things at first. Or washing dishes.”

“So you remember my cooking.”

“Unfortunately.”

That led to some pleasant roughhousing, just as it had when they were younger, and Steve tried not to let it rankle too much that Bucky was decidedly gentle with his joking attempts to get Steve into a hold. Bucky was careful with his strength, that was all.

“Did you not work out or spar back in New York? That was pathetic, Rogers,” said Bucky when Steve failed at breaking even Bucky’s light and teasing chokehold.

“Didn’t exactly have the time, no.” And he hadn’t had the patience for any pitying, careful looks about his current weakling status.

Bucky gave him a sidelong look and grinned. “Maybe we can start up the old training regimen again.”

Steve groaned. “You remember that?”

When Steve had first decided to enlist, he’d embarked on a personal training regimen that was more stubbornness and grit than any kind of effective. Bucky had taken one look at Steve huffing his way through a cobbled together calisthenics routine in what little free space was available in their apartment, and dragged him off to the Y’s gym. _If you’re gonna do this, you’re gonna do it right._ And so he’d gamely run and swam and boxed with Steve, with what Steve recognized in retrospect was something close to saintly patience and an equal parts gratifying and alarming faith in Steve’s physical abilities. God, Steve had been such a little asshole back then.

“Yeah, I remember that. Learned some of the foulest curses I’ve ever heard while you were huffing and puffing your way down the track,” he said, and Steve elbowed him. “Seriously, we can start it up again. You’re healthier now, you’ll do great if you put the effort in.”

The part of Steve that was still twenty and spitting mad about all his physical limitations bristled at the offer. The older, wiser parts realized how dumb he’d been. Bucky had never judged him or pitied him; he was just offering his help, the way he always had.

“Yeah, yeah okay. Thanks, Buck.”

By then they’d reached the village center where the communal kitchen was, and where dinner was already well under way. They were greeted cheerfully by those sitting outside on logs and benches, already eating. Before Steve and Bucky could join any of them, Steve was immediately if politely mobbed by some children.

Bucky abandoned him with a grin. “Sit down with the inquisition here, I’ll bring you a plate,” he said, and ducked into the kitchen, leaving Steve alone to assure the kids that yes, he was still Steve, and no, he was not Captain America anymore, and yes, he was going to be staying here with Bucky.

“What are you gonna do here now that you’re not a superhero?” asked one of the children, all innocent wide eyes.

Great. Even small children were pointing out Steve’s shiftless lack of life plans now. He sat on one of the benches and almost heard his back creak in protest. Fuck, he had not missed this.

“I don’t know yet,” he told the kids.

“Hey, you think he is not a superhero anymore just because he’s small?” asked one of the villagers, a dignified looking older man whose eyes sparkled with mirth.

“Weelll, he’s not super strong any more,” ventured one of the children, eyeing Steve’s thin frame dubiously.

“The Falcon hasn’t got superpowers, but he’s the new Captain America anyway,” said Steve.

“And what of the Black Widow, and whatshisface with the arrows! Steve here can still be a superhero if he wants. Now go, go get your own dinners, children! Leave us old men to chat in peace.”

“Thanks,” Steve told the man once the children scattered. “Um, I’m Steve, but I guess you already know that.”

“Lwazi. Welcome to our humble village of old soldiers,” he said, and shook Steve’s hand.

Between his close-cut, silver hair and deep set eyes, Lwazi had a professorial sort of air. He’d called himself an old soldier, but he had the same sort of agelessness as Nick Fury; to Steve’s eye, Lwazi could have been anywhere between forty and seventy. Only glancing at Lwazi’s rather gnarled hands made Steve revise his age estimate higher.

“Aww, you’re not old,” said Bucky, returning with two plates of food. “What are you, eighty? You’re a spring chicken compared to us century-old geezers, Lwazi.”

Lwazi smiled at them, broad and deep enough to reveal a whole map of wrinkles. “Ha, talk to me when your biological age matches your temporal one!”

Steve took his plate of food from Bucky with a murmured thanks. Thankfully, none of the other villagers were as openly curious as the children had been, and Steve ate his meal without having to answer any questions more difficult than how was the food (excellent) and was he settling in okay (yes) and was Bucky looking after him, he was too skinny, he should eat more (yes, Bucky always looked after him, even when he didn’t need it, and he was trying).

They stayed until the sun set, eating and talking and laughing under the blazing and darkening sky. As it grew darker, the village seemed to become even more homey, as if night was a blanket it was drawing around itself, and all of them inside it were drawn together, warm and close. As he listened to the sounds of people laughing and talking, and children chattering, he was reminded of the tenements he’d grown up in, only not their nightly cacophony of crying babies and shouting families, but the good times: the holidays and happy occasions, or those rare times when all of Brooklyn had seemed buoyed up on some bright and sunny mood.

It felt, suddenly, like a miracle. And then he realized, it kind of was. The world had come so close to losing all of this.

“What is it?” Bucky asked quietly, and Steve startled, turned back towards him. Bucky was looking at him, solemn and a little worried.

“Nothing. It’s nothing, it’s fine. Just—” He looked around at the ordinary comings and goings of the village’s evening, and failed to find the words. He swallowed hard.

Words or no words, Bucky understood him. “Yeah,” he said roughly, and Steve saw some of his own mingled grief and wonder reflected back at him in Bucky’s eyes. Then Bucky stood, and held out a hand to him. “World’s still spinning though, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to us,” said Steve as he took Bucky’s hand, because it wasn’t as if Bucky hadn’t had his own part in that fight.

Bucky pulled him up and let go of his hand. Steve’s fingers twitched with the urge to reach for Bucky’s hand again.

“Come on, we’re on clean up duty.”

So they collected plates and washed the dishes, and even the prosaic act of drying dishes felt miraculous. Three months ago, Steve would have given anything for just this moment in all its domestic mundanity: Bucky, humming absently under his breath as he put dishes away, a perfect counterpoint to the more distant sounds of a village full of life, winding down for the evening.

It had been so damned quiet after Thanos.

Somehow, Bucky knew what he was thinking, or maybe it was just that he was thinking the same thing.

“Yeah, it was quiet in the Soul Stone too,” he said. “Then I got back here, and the kids were shouting and playing, and the birds were making a racket…” Bucky shook his head, shrugged. “That’s when I really got it. It was really over.”

Steve sniffed, wiped at his eyes. “Yeah. Keep thinking I should be over it by now, but…”

“Not the kind of thing you get over quickly,” finished Bucky, matter of fact.

“Guess not.”

* * *

It took a long time for Steve to fall asleep that night. He wanted to blame his mid-day nap and lingering jet lag, but he knew better. It was Bucky keeping him up, his breath and his warmth, the simple, precious fact of him. Steve wanted to hoard every little truth against future loss: the sweep of Bucky’s thick, dark eyelashes, the curl of Bucky’s flesh hand, the perfectly vulnerable patch of bare, soft skin above his collar bone, and the scars too, faded to pale pink now where they met the neatly covered port where Bucky’s vibranium arm attached. He’d taken the arm off to sleep, claiming it was more comfortable that way, and then he’d let Steve put his hair in a ponytail for him, and Steve had memorized that too, the feeling of Bucky’s soft hair against his fingers, the way it glinted auburn in the warm light of the bedroom.

It was enough. If there was never anything more between them than this, companionship and care, then it would be enough.

* * *

_So when’s the wedding???_

_What wedding?_

_Yours and Bucky’s, dumbass. Don’t tell me you DIDN’T fess up_

_I have a PLAN sam_

_So what you’re saying is that you chickened out_

_NO. I’m saying I have a plan. I’m gonna prove to him that I’m sticking with this retirement thing, alright? That I’m not gonna leave again. I told you, I’m gonna do right by him, for once._

The … that meant Sam was typing stayed on screen for a long time. When a message finally came, it wasn’t the wall of text Steve had almost feared.

_Ugh you two deserve each other_

* * *

Steve spent most of his first week as a retiree tagging along with Bucky. This consisted of a lot of watching Bucky do assorted farm chores: tending to the goats and cattle, helping with the village garden, cleaning the chicken coop. Steve tried to help, but the goats hated him, and two minutes in the chicken coop made Steve start sneezing enough that Bucky sent him right back outside.

“I’m not sure farming is really your thing,” was Bucky’s conclusion at the end of the day, which was rich coming from him. A quiet country life may have been agreeing with him now, but Bucky was just as much of an inveterate city boy as Steve was.

“It can be my thing!” said Steve, frowning at him over the bed as he pulled down the covers. “I’m gonna pull my weight in the village, and if that involves dealing with the dumb goats and chickens—”

“There’s no shortage of other things to do, you don’t have to sneeze your head off collecting the eggs every day. Also, and I know this is difficult for you, but you can just, you know, _take a break_. Rest, relax, do nothing. You helped save half the universe, you can rest on your laurels for at least a week. Maybe even a whole _month_.”

“So that means I don’t have to do my own laundry?”

Bucky glowered at him as he sat on the bed. “No, you absolutely need to do your own laundry.”

Steve grinned and got under the covers. “C’mon, Buck, gimme a little more than a day to try out this farming thing. Maybe the goats will warm up to me. Or I’ll warm up to the goats, whatever.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure about that. They’re…kinda particular,” said Bucky with a dubious frown. “But okay, you’ve got a point. I’ll show you more livestock handling tips tomorrow. And if you’re so determined to try this farming thing, you can look after the goats while I’m in Jabariland later this week.”

“Why are you going to Jabariland?”

“Some of their bridges got wrecked by avalanches the other week, they need some help with repairs,” said Bucky absently as he rolled his left shoulder and detached his vibranium arm for the night.

Steve froze. It was a good thing Bucky had turned to set his arm down against the nightstand and wasn’t looking at Steve’s face.

“You’re going up the mountains, to repair bridges, over snowy, deadly mountain ravines?” he asked, in what he sure hoped was an even voice.

Bucky’s shoulders tensed for a brief moment, then he turned back to face Steve with a look caught somewhere between horror, dismay, and out-of-place amusement.

“Aww, Steve it’s not—I’m not gonna be doing anything _dangerous_. Just spotting the workers. Some of those passes are too narrow for the hovercrafts, and I’m strong enough to hold the rope for a long time. I’m not gonna be dangling out over nothing myself.”

“Right.”

“I promise,” said Bucky as he got under the covers.

“Okay, sure. It’s fine, totally fine.” Not at all the stuff of Steve’s _literal nightmares_.

“Yeah, it is, it totally is. And really, what’s the likelihood of me dying the same way twice—”

Steve punched him, hard. “Buck!”

“Sorry! I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ll be back before you know it. And hey, the goats’ll keep you company.”

* * *

How hard could it be to look after some goats for a day or two?

Bucky had given him a two-day crash course on the care and feeding of goats, and it had all seemed straightforward enough. Keep them fed and watered, milk them, keep them from getting into any trouble…easy, right?

The moment Bucky had stepped out of sight though, it was like the goats _knew_. They knew they were under Steve’s subpar, city boy supervision, and they knew Steve did not like them, a feeling which they returned with vigor.

Steve knew goats weren’t predators, that there was no damn reason for the hairs on the back of his neck to go up as he filled the goats’ water trough and set out some hay. It was just that it kind of felt like the goats were about to attack him for the crime of not being Bucky. There was something distinctly malevolent about the six pairs of eerie goat pupils staring unwaveringly at him. But Steve wasn’t gonna let Bucky down. He was gonna take care of these goats, no matter how demonic they looked.

Once the goats were somewhat occupied with their breakfast, Steve grabbed a pail and readied himself to milk some goats. Bucky had shown him how, it wasn’t hard. Bucky often managed it with one hand, even. So Steve could do this.

From the first squeeze and tug, Steve realized he could not do this.

He’d barely gotten his hand on her udder when the goat bleated in rage, and she would have pranced away if Steve hadn’t grabbed onto her. “Easy there! Just—stand still, will you? You’ll feel better after I do this, right?”

He stroked her back a little, and this seemed to calm her down enough for Steve to crouch down and try milking her again. She stayed still this time, at least until Steve started milking too fast. All throughout, he swore he could feel the disapproval of all the rest of the damn goats, like they were judging his milking technique and finding it wanting. They were bleating way more than they did when Bucky did this, and bleating louder too. Was that a bad sign? They stayed quiet for Bucky, as if listening to his gentle nonsense murmurs while he milked them. Right. Maybe the goats just needed…conversation?

“Hey, so…I’m Steve. Which you know. Bucky’s away for the day, so I’m uh, taking care of you today. If you could just…stay still and let me milk you, I’d appreciate it.” The goat bleated in contempt, which, _rude_. Steve thought he was making perfectly polite conversation here, given he was talking to an animal that couldn’t talk back. “Hey, I’m just tryin’ to be polite here, alright?”

Steve heard the abrupt resurgence of Brooklyn in his voice, and closed his eyes in mortification. The goat seized on this moment of weakness, and when Steve was still mid-tug, trotted away.

“Okay, you know what, fine. Who’s next?” he asked, surveying the remaining unmilked goats.

None of them, apparently. When Bucky did this, the goats placidly approached him for milking, one by one, as if they understood the concept of taking turns. They did no such thing for Steve. Which was fine. They just weren’t used to him, was all. He could go to the goats. Only, the moment he tried, they all pranced away.

_I used to be Captain America_ , Steve told himself. _I helped win World War II. I helped save half of the entire universe. I can milk some goddamned goats._

* * *

Two hours later, Steve was forced to admit: he could not milk some goddamned goats.

Bucky had, apparently, foreseen this eventuality, because by late morning, one of the village kids came by to help.

“Ingcuka told us you might need some help,” said Thabo, then cocked his head and peered at Steve. “You okay? You look really red. Maybe you should put some clay on your face, to keep the sun off.”

“I’m fine, it’s just, you know, my rage at having to deal with goats,” said Steve, and gestured at the cluster of glaring goats, all of them huddled as far from Steve as they could get in the pen, and glaring furiously. No wonder people associated goats with demons, thought Steve. It sure felt like they were devils sent up from hell purely to test Steve.

Thabo nodded as if Steve’s goat-related rage was normal. “Yeah, they’re pretty annoying.”

Thabo hopped over the short fence of the pen and grabbed a bucket. He made a few coaxing kind of clicks with his tongue, and the goats flocked to him, bleating plaintively, as if they were complaining about Steve. When Thabo knelt down to start milking one of them, exactly like how Steve had tried milking her, as far as he could tell, she stayed perfectly still.

“Oh, come on! That’s exactly what I did!” said Steve as Thabo laughed and milked the goats with no trouble.

* * *

Steve thought he was free and clear when it came to farm chore disasters after that, and he was, for a while. He tidied up the animal pen, cleaned up around the cottage a little, and by then it was lunch time so he delivered some of the goat milk to the village kitchen and put in a shift chopping fruits and vegetables for meals. (He was not yet trusted with actual cooking, which was probably for the best.) After a quick lunch of goat cheese, bread warm from the oven, and fruit he’d seen picked just that morning, Steve thought he understood the appeal of country life. There was something satisfying about how the rewards of hard work were often so immediately visible, and there was an undeniable pleasure and comfort in seeing the way the disparate parts of the village came together to form a whole, working community, with even Steve’s small contributions helping to keep everyone fed and sheltered. It was a small life, maybe, smaller than he’d ever anticipated, but Steve was just pleased that he wasn’t completely helpless when it came to country living. 

Of course, then he got back to the cottage to find two of the goats on the roof, because hubris was every hero’s downfall.

“How? _Why_?” demanded Steve. One of the goats bleated, probably in triumph. The other goat chewed vengefully on the roof’s thatch.

Okay, this was fine, Steve could handle this. This, he remembered, was the goats being ‘back on their bullshit’ and Bucky had handled it, so it could be handled. But _how_ had Bucky handled it. Maybe if Steve lured them down with food? Food that was more appetizing than the thatching?

Steve waved some handfuls of hay in the goats’ general direction. “Hey! Hey…goats! Doesn’t this fresh hay look more tasty than that old thatch?”

Now both goats were chewing on the roof. Steve foresaw leaks in his near future. He tried a few other food options to tempt the goats back down, oats and fruit and even, in desperation, the little honey cakes that Bucky loved, but all these options paled in favor of the thatching, apparently. Okay, if the proverbial carrot didn’t work, time for the stick. He’d have to try scaring them off the roof.

Because Steve’s luck was just getting worse and worse, Lwazi came by while Steve was shouting and flailing his arms at the goats, who seemed to regard this display with contempt rather than fear. Which, honestly, fair enough.

“Now how did those goats get up there?” asked Lwazi, as he peered up at the cottage roof.

“I have no idea,” said Steve. Okay, if the goats weren’t scared of him, maybe Steve could throw something at them? Get them to move off the roof? He picked up a few small rocks and started throwing them in the goats’ general direction.

Lwazi turned his puzzled stare on Steve. “And why are you doing that?”

“I’m trying to scare them so they come down.” Steve tossed a rock at the goats. The goats just blinked, unimpressed.

“Well it’s not working.”

“I’m aware. Got any suggestions?”

Lwazi shook his head slowly. “Have you tried just asking them nicely to come back down?”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” was Steve’s automatic response.

He chucked another rock in the goats’ direction. One of the goats bleated in response, and the other stamped her hoof in a deliberate sort of way, as if to say, _I can and will bring this roof down around your ears_.

“Let’s try some conflict resolution anyway,” said Lwazi, and then he called out to the goats in Xhosa. Steve recognized the words _down_ and _please_ , but that was about it. Whatever Lwazi said, the goats weren’t impressed. Lwazi shrugged. “Eh, well, I tried. They’ll come down on their own eventually, I’m sure. Maybe they just miss the mountains, you know?”

“Not really what I was hoping to hear.”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m a War Dog, not a farmer. What do I know from goats?” Lwazi clapped Steve on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out,” he said, then ambled away.

* * *

The goats didn’t come down on their own. Night fell, Bucky and Steve exchanged before bed text messages, and still, the goats stayed on the roof. Steve should have asked Bucky what to do, but goddammit, Bucky had left him in charge of the goats, and Steve could handle a half dozen goats on his own, he could. He wasn’t going to fail at retirement after just one day alone on the farm.

And anyway, probably the goats would come down by morning and then Bucky would be back, and it would be like this whole thing had never happened. Bucky would say _hey, maybe you’ll get the hang of this farming thing after all_ , his eyes soft and his lips smiling, and Steve would say, _yeah, the goats are growing on me_ , and Bucky would laugh, his big goofy laugh that made his nose scrunch up, and say _now that’s a lie, Steven_ and Steve would—then the goats on the roof started bleating. And the goats in the pen joined them. A whole chorus of bleating goats, all braying in the demonic opposite of harmony.

Steve went back outside. “You know, if you’re so unhappy, you got up there, you can get back down! It’s not that high up!” The braying bleats in answer to this suggestion had a distinct subtext of _NO!!!!_ “Well I’m not climbing up there after you!”

If Steve had still had the serum, sure, he’d have done it and damn the blow to his dignity. But as it was, he seriously doubted his ability to haul a goat around, much less two ornery goats. They were hefty, well-fed little monsters that weighed more than Steve currently did, and Steve wasn’t about to risk toppling off the roof with one of them. He’d probably die, and then the tears at his funeral would be tears of laughter rather than grief. No. The goats had made this bad decision, they’d just have to live with it.

* * *

The goats just. Kept bleating. All night long. _They are all going to become stew_ , Steve promised himself. _Or we’ll roast them on a spit. Then they’ll shut up for good._

* * *

Because farm life was cruel and fickle, the goats stayed on the roof all night, and no amount of fantasizing about roast goat helped Steve fall asleep. Instead, Steve got to contemplate just how very much he was not cut out for life as a farmer. This, reflected Steve grimly, was not going to be the way he convinced Bucky he was serious about this retirement thing. Hell, after this, Steve doubted Bucky would let him help out around the farm at all, and then it would be just like Steve’s visits to Wakanda had been, with Steve being treated like a guest who was going to leave again. 

If farming was definitely off the list of ways to spend his retirement, Steve was just going to have find another one. Which was okay, it was totally fine. He had other options. So many other non-fighting, peaceful, totally retired options, that he was fully qualified for.

He couldn’t think of any right now, not with the demonic chorus of unhappy bleating goats crowding out rational thought, but he definitely had options that he would think seriously about in the morning, or whenever the goats shut the hell up.

* * *

By the time Steve gave up on sleep and/or the goats’ silence, the sun was rising, and the goats were still on the roof. They stayed on the roof all morning too, unmoved by pleas, threats, and offers of fresh food. The goats, in fact, stayed on the roof until Bucky got back in the early afternoon, and the moment Bucky caught sight of them, he started laughing and didn’t stop, bent over nearly double as he clutched the fence beside the cottage.

“Buck, it’s not funny! They’ve been up there since yesterday! I couldn’t get them to come back down, and they kept me up all night—”

Bucky’s laughter was by now just a breathless, happy gasping, interrupted by the occasional damnably adorable snort. Steve tried to be annoyed at the sight—he’d hoped for some sympathy or at the least some help—but it was impossible, and it was impossible not to laugh along with Bucky. Forget the Infinity Stones, Bucky’s unguarded laughing fit was the most precious, invaluable thing in the entire damned universe, and in this moment, Steve knew he’d have given up far more than just the serum for even the smallest chance to see this again.

“Sorry, sorry,” gasped Bucky eventually. “Just—you and the goats really don’t get along, do you?”

“They’re _demon goats_ and they _hate me_.”

Finally, Bucky drew himself up, red-cheeked from laughing, and came to Steve. He wrapped Steve up in a hug so tight it lifted Steve up off his feet. Back in Brooklyn, Steve’s injured pride would have had him trying to squirm out of a hug like this, but now Steve was wiser, and he knew to hold both this feeling and Bucky close, he knew to hold onto what he could before he had nothing at all. All the lingering remnants of Steve’s goat-related fury dissipated faster than fog in sunshine. Too soon, Bucky let Steve go.

“I know you’re plenty stubborn, but maybe don’t try to out stubborn a goat,” said Bucky, his eyes still sparkling with mirth and his cheeks stretched into a broad grin. “You just gotta try a bit of honey instead of your usual piss and vinegar.”

With that, Bucky strode over to the side of the cottage nearest to one of the goats, and called up to her in his gentlest, sweetest voice. Which was not fair. The goats did not deserve that voice. Just hearing it made basically all of Steve’s muscles turn wobbly, including his heart, and he found himself wanting to lean towards Bucky, as if he was some kind of siren. 

“Hey Hellraiser, you wanna come back down to solid ground? Promise I’ve got some tastier feed than that nasty thatch,” cajoled Bucky. The goat trotted daintily over to the side of the roof, and bleated reprovingly at Bucky, who just smiled up at her, and okay, yeah, that clinched it. Steve was officially jealous of a goat. “Yeah, I know, I was gone, I’m sorry. You didn’t have to give Steve so much grief though. Come on, come down now, I’ve got you.”

“Okay, me and Lwazi _tried_ talking them down and it did not—”

Before Steve could finish his sentence, the goat took one small leap off the roof right into Bucky’s arms, who of course caught her easily, not even staggering under the weight. He set her down gently, and caught the second goat too when she jumped.

“What the fuck,” breathed Steve.

“Yeah, I think they like being up high? But then they get up there and they’re too dumb to realize they can get back down. You just gotta be nice to ‘em, coax them back down to solid ground. Goats like it when you smile at them.”

“ _What_.”

“It’s science! There was a peer-reviewed study and everything.” Bucky picked both of the goats up again and set them inside their pen, where they immediately ran for the trough. He turned back to Steve. “So, apart from the goats on the roof, how’d your day as a farmer go?”

“Not great, Buck,” admitted Steve. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think I’m cut out for the farming life,” Steve told him grimly, and braced himself for Bucky’s disappointment.

Bucky didn’t seem too concerned though. Instead he just said, “Yeah, I figured.”

He had the same fond and wry grin on his face as when Steve had tried to bake him a birthday cake back in ’39, on the reasoning that it would be cheaper than getting anything from the bakery. The cake had been…less than ideal. Bucky had eaten it anyway. Steve wasn’t sure if he should feel condescended to or comforted.

Bucky continued, “You don’t have to keep forcing yourself to try it, you know. Just cross it off the list of your possible retirement options, and move on to the next one. Or, and this is a wild idea, but maybe try doing nothing for a while.”

“Doing nothing is not a valid retirement plan, Buck. I can’t spend the rest of my life doing _nothing_.”

“Who said you gotta spend the rest of your life that way? I just mean you can take some time to regroup. You’ve been here for like a week. My first week in the village, I didn’t have a damned thing figured out.”

Steve didn’t think that was comparable, really, given the shape Bucky had been in post-cryo, and given that he’d been brought here to heal and recover. He didn’t say so though, unwilling to upset Bucky with the reminder.

“Yeah, I get that, but I don’t wanna be completely useless in the meantime. I’m here to stay, I want to act like it, instead of just being the guy who comes by, eats your food, and leaves again.”

This was too close to an admission of his plan, and Bucky’s reaction was dismayingly inscrutable, his expression too even.

“I know you want to stay,” he said, with the barest hint of emphasis on _want,_ like it wasn’t the wanting that was in question here, but something else. Before Steve could press him, he continued, “And come on, I didn’t think you were being some kinda, I don’t know, moocher. You had important shit to do, renegade Avenging and all.”

“And I’m done with that now, for good. So I want to stay here, and farm or learn to deal with the goats, or do whatever needs doing—”

“Steve, I can handle the farm stuff, it ain’t exactly Little House on the Prairie out here.” Bucky cocked his head at what Steve recognized as a dangerous angle. It was a mix of his getting-an-idea head tilt and his I-see-your-bullshit stare, and that always boded trouble. “But okay, if you wanna do what needs doing, you can come with me to see the elders.”

“I’d like that, thanks,” said Steve. He wasn’t entirely sure what seeing the elders entailed, exactly, but he figured they’d at least give Steve something to do while he regrouped, as Bucky put it.

“First though, you gotta go up on the roof to clean up the goat shit, please.”

“Goat milk isn’t worth the goats, Buck. It really, really isn’t.”


	4. Chapter 4

Steve wasn’t sure what to expect when Bucky took him to see the village elders. He’d met them already, briefly, and he knew some of them had helped Bucky during his recovery. Bucky had never volunteered many details about the specific form of thelp that had been offered, and Steve hadn’t pried. _He needs more healing than just the physical or even mental_ , T’Challa had told Steve, way back when Bucky had first gone into cryo. Steve hadn’t been entirely sure what other kind of healing there was, but whatever it was, it had manifestly worked. Steve didn’t need the private details when he had the evidence of how much less sad and how much more settled Bucky had been.

Bucky still spent a fair amount of time with the elders, doing unspecified things that Steve had never tagged along for until today. Even now, Steve wasn’t tagging along exactly; Bucky was whisked away by Thandiwe, a formidable looking older woman who bore the gnarled and shiny burn scars stretching across her face and neck like honored tattoos. Steve hoped his relief wasn’t too obvious. There was something almost unbearably direct about Thandiwe, in the way she looked at people and lived in the world. With Thandiwe, there was never any doubt that she was wholly in the present moment, her total focus on exactly what she was doing, her every movement both deliberate and graceful. Just being within five feet of her made Steve fidgety and restless with the desire to retreat from her inescapable sense of presence and her laser-focused attention, which Steve felt pretty damned bad about, which of course only made him want to avoid her more. Bucky had no such problem, as far as Steve could tell. There was no hint of wariness or tension in his body language when Steve saw them together, though Steve had never actually seen them talk beyond friendly greetings either. 

As Bucky and Thandiwe loped off together to who knew where to do who knew what, Steve was left to make small talk with Khanya, whose snow-white thundercloud of hair belied a still leanly muscled frame that suggested she could still run marathons with little effort. It was Khanya who effectively ran the village, and out of all the elders, Steve had spoken to her most often on his earlier visits. So it was Khanya who he asked about what he could do to help out around the village more.

“It’s very kind of you to offer, Steve, but no, thank you, we do not need any help.” Steve smiled at her and tried not to let his shoulders sag with disappointment. He wasn’t too successful, judging by the tilt of Khanya’s head. “Do you feel like you need to help, in order to be here?” she asked.

“Um. I just want to contribute, I guess. I know it’s an honor to be welcomed here. I don’t want to be a burden, on the village, or on Wakanda, I’ve always tried to make my own way. And I don’t do well being idle.”

“Hmm. That’s a kind thought,” she said, then patted him on the shoulder. “But you can take time to rest and recover. Isn’t that what Bucky did, when he came here? And now look at him, now he is truly finding his place here.”

“I don’t really need to recover from anything, ma’am.”

For some reason, this made Khanya’s eyebrows furrow in something like disappointment. “Did you not just fight a war to restore half of the universe? Did you not sacrifice your physical strength and power?”

Steve shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a sacrifice, really. And I’m fine. I don’t need to rest up in bed or anything. Got enough of that when I was constantly sick as a kid.”

“When I said rest, I did not mean _bed_ rest, Steve,” said Khanya, with enough tartness in her tone to make Steve flush and clear his throat.

“Is there, um, another kind of rest?”

Khanya’s lips thinned, so clearly, this was the wrong question. “What kind of resting do you think your Bucky has been doing?” she asked.

“Not...fighting?” Steve hazarded.

Abruptly, he realized that he didn’t actually know just what kind of resting Bucky had been doing. Sure, Bucky had slept a lot at first those first few weeks out of cryo, a known and deliberate side effect of the treatments used to strip out the trigger words and heal his brain, but apart from that, Steve had assumed Bucky was just...running the farm, restfully.

Khanya hummed in somewhat ominous fashion. “I suppose we can start with that,” she said, then she turned on her heel and beckoned Steve to follow her.“Come, let me show you around more of the village while Bucky speaks to Thandiwe.”

* * *

 

“Had a good talk with Khanya?” asked Bucky later, when they were headed back towards the cottage late that afternoon.

“Yeah, it was good. She showed me around the village more, told me more about it and the people here. Didn’t realize we were practically in a retirement home here, Buck.”

Steve’s earlier visits here had been pretty focused on Bucky, and hadn’t really been long enough for anything more than a cursory familiarity with the border village and its people. Khanya had told him more, and introduced him around to the people who were now his neighbors: some families who commuted into the Golden City for work or school and some folks who did some form of remote work and liked the slower pace of rural life, but most of the village’s population consisted of retired War Dogs and other Wakandan elders.

Bucky grinned. “The old War Dogs might be retired from the field, but do they _look_ like they’re ready for bingo and shuffleboard to you?”

“They definitely don’t,” said Steve. He’d seen some of them training the other day, and they were clearly still formidable foes. “I’m actually not sure they count as retired, Khanya said a lot of them still train new War Dogs.”

“That something you might wanna do?”

“Not sure what I could teach Wakandan War Dogs.”

“Not the War Dogs, I meant the Avengers, or SHIELD agents, or whatever.”

Steve looked over at Bucky, surprised. The suggestion had been nonchalant enough, but Bucky’s expression was too damned even and calm. Steve was starting to hate that not-quite-blank look, the way it gave nothing away to Steve, as if Bucky had practiced that careful inscrutability.

“Tony offered me an opportunity like that, actually. I turned him down,” said Steve, and the words came out like a challenge. Bucky glanced at him, surprise obvious in his raised eyebrows.

“Why?”

“I told you, I’m done, I’m staying here. With you.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed with uncertainty, and that was it, there was the reason Steve’s plan had to work. Bucky had to know Steve meant it, when he said he was staying with Bucky and out of the fight. Before he asked for more, before he let go of this one last secret, Steve _had_ to prove this to Bucky.

“Alright,” said Bucky quietly. He was looking down, the dark sweep of his eyelashes hiding his eyes. “But if they need you—I don’t want you to feel like you gotta stay here, with me. I—I haven’t ever asked that of you.”

 _You could_ , Steve wanted to say. _You could ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you._ But he couldn’t stand to say the words, only to see Bucky smile that sad smile of his, and not believe him.

So instead Steve said, “They don’t need me. And anyway, Sam and the team deserve the time and space to figure the new dynamic without me there confusing the chain of command.”

“Right, that makes sense,” said Bucky, and then silence hung around them, as unavoidable and hard to banish as a persistent cloud of gnats, until Bucky finally cleared his throat and asked. “So, um, have you hung out with Lwazi yet? I think you’d get along...”

* * *

 

After that one afternoon with Khanya, it felt like every time he stepped foot out of the cottage, he was waylaid by one of the village elders. The first couple times, Steve figured he was still just being shown around the village properly, finally being welcomed as a fellow villager instead of as Bucky’s guest. He learned everyone’s names and a little of their stories, and he told them his, and when his own store of conversation faltered, he listened when they told him about Bucky. _A very respectful young man_ and _good with the children_ and _so patient_ , they said, and Steve beamed at them with entirely misplaced pride, because maybe it had nothing to do with him, but yes, that was Bucky, and Steve loved him. Which was probably obvious, judging by the indulgent smiles he got in return. For all they told him about their White Wolf though, they wouldn’t explain where the nickname had come from, and neither would Bucky.

Even after the rounds of introductions, assorted elders, usually Khanya, kept dragging him along on walks around the lake, and on short treks around the border lands to fetch this or that. He supposed he had asked if he could help. He just wasn’t sure how much he was helping by accompanying elders on one errand or another, and he suspected it was busywork. He supposed it could be the elders’ way of gently trying to teach Steve the customs and ways of village life in Wakanda.

Or maybe this was just what life in Wakanda was. It was a more communal society, tight-knit and closely bound in family and tribal groups that had deep histories. He supposed it would have had to be, after so many long centuries of deliberate isolation. The dizzying mix of a futuristic society with still vital ancient roots made Steve feel young, and not even the close quarters of tenement life had quite prepared Steve for living in such a close-knit village. He thought he could get used to it, maybe, even if it did feel claustrophobic sometimes. Claustrophobic or not, it was definitely living in the world, just as Natasha had said he should.

He just wished living in the world didn’t involve being asked quite so many questions about his life plans and/or lack thereof.

“What did you think you would do with your life when you were a young man?” asked Khanya when they were in the middle of a hike that was ostensibly meant to gather herbs, but which in actuality seemed to be an excuse to teach Steve about the landscape around the village.

“Mostly I thought I’d be dead by thirty, so it wasn’t much use thinking beyond that.”

“You are well past thirty now,” she said. “Do you know what you want to do now?”

Steve’s heart thumped hard and dipped down into his stomach. “Not yet. Still feeling out this retirement thing. Got any suggestions?”

Khanya snorted. “What am I, a career counselor? No, I have no suggestions. But no need to worry, you can take your time to figure it out. You Americans, always rushing rushing rushing, and working working working. There is value in slowing down. And there is value in accepting life rather than anticipating death.”

* * *

 

Khanya’s words rattled around in his head, as they often did. Their walks always started as simple things, pleasant conversation about what mischief Thabo was getting up to now or what festival was coming up next, and then somehow Khanya would say something like “it’s alright if you’re still grieving,” or “sometimes the certainty of war feels easier than the uncertainty of peace.” And sometimes she would tell him stories, folk tales or fables, and Steve took them in like they were dreams, knowing they were important even as their meaning slipped through his grasping fingers.

“How was the walk?” Bucky asked him when he got back, and Steve shrugged and joined him on the couch.

Bucky set down his tablet and gave his full attention to Steve. He was studying a lot lately, flitting from subject to subject as he tried to decide what university classes he wanted to take first. Term was starting up again soon at the University of Wakanda, and despite the fact that Bucky wouldn’t be required to choose a specific field of study during his first term, he was spending nearly all his free time quietly agonizing over it anyway.

“The walk was fine,” Steve said. “What do you do with the elders when you’re spending time with them anyway? I feel like I’m just tagging along to hear Khanya talk, she doesn’t ever actually seem to need any help.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Yeah, no, usually the elders don’t. I mean, I carry stuff sometimes or whatever, but...you know I’m not going on those walks just to help them, right? That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because they’re helping _me_.”

“But you’re—you’re fine. I mean, you’re doing okay, right? You’ve got most of your memories back, the trigger words are gone.”

Bucky made a sharp dismissive gesture with his head. “Yeah, but all the rest of it isn’t. It’s never going to be.” He sighed, and suddenly he looked exhausted, the way he had in that apartment in Bucharest. “You think—you think I’m sleeping through the night, and I’m safe, and it’s—yeah, that’s true, for now, but all that shit HYDRA did to me—it doesn’t go away, not ever. If you’re waiting for it to, if you’re waiting for me to be the person I was before—”

“I’m not, Buck, I swear I’m not. I know there’s no going back, and I wouldn’t even really want to.”

“Whatever, that’s not the point,” said Bucky with another shake of his head. And before Steve could reassure him that he liked Bucky as he was now, he continued, “You really didn’t know what those walks are for?”

“No one’s told me, so no!”

“Pretty sure they did! T’Challa said, _you can rest and recover here_. And I don’t know what the hell it is you think I do with Thandiwe all the time, but it sure as hell isn’t chores or errands.”

“I don’t—I don’t need to recover, c’mon. I’m fine.”

“Sure. Those six months with half the universe gone never happened, right?” asked Bucky, laying the sarcasm on thick.

“They _didn’t_. That was the point of what we did, how we fixed it, it _didn’t happen_ , you’re all back,” he said, but Bucky shook his head.

“It happened to _you_. And to me.”

Steve opened his mouth in a reflexive denial, but then he took a closer look at Bucky, saw the raw intensity there, something like grief. _It wasn’t easy for us, either, doing the leaving_ , Sam had said, and Steve saw it now, laid bare on Bucky’s face.

“So I’m supposed to...talk about it.”

Bucky let out a gusty and relieved sigh. “Yeah, Steve.”

“I’d rather not.” He narrowed his eyes at Bucky. “And hey, I’ve basically never seen you actually talking to Thandiwe.”

Bucky laughed, but the sound wasn’t all that mirthful. “Me and Thandiwe don’t always talk, no. It took me three fucking weeks to say a word to her that wasn’t just hello, which turned out alright, actually, because it isn’t always about saying anything. But I don’t think you wanna do things the way Thandiwe does with me. I see you avoiding her.”

“She’s, uh, intense.”

“That’s one word for it, yeah. Khanya’s not though, not like that anyway. Talk to Khanya, Steve, please. I promise it’ll help.”

 _Goddammit_. If Bucky was asking him, and with the big sad eyes no less, Steve couldn’t say no.

“Okay,” said Steve. “Okay, I’ll try.”

* * *

 

“You could’ve _told_ me this was therapy,” Steve told Khanya the next time she asked him to accompany her.

She tsked, and set off into the plains with her usual long-legged, loping stride, her staff swinging beside her. Steve had to jog to catch up with her. “I thought you knew! Did Bucky not tell you? He was supposed to tell you.”

“He thought T’Challa told me...kind of.” And, Steve could admit that Bucky had probably, not incorrectly, assumed that if he had told Steve more directly, Steve would have found a way to get out of it.

Khanya muttered some unflattering things about their lack of communication skills, then fixed him with a look that was simultaneously stern and amused.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, this isn’t the sort of therapy you are familiar with. Consider it...more like teaching, if you like.”

“If this is you teaching me, I’d appreciate having a lesson plan, or a syllabus.”

“Fair enough. But first, answer me this: what is the biggest problem in your life right now? There’s no wrong answer, I only want to know what you think. You can take time to think about it.”

The contrary part of Steve, the part that had gotten through SHIELD-mandated therapy sessions by telling the therapists what they wanted to hear, wanted to stonewall and deflect, deny he had any problems at all. After six months with half of the universe dead, most other problems seemed pretty trivial. But it wasn’t as if the answer to this question was all that difficult to glean.

“Not knowing what to do, I guess. I mean, what to do with my life, now that I’m not fighting.”

It wasn’t the whole, truest answer, but it wasn’t _untrue_ either. Khanya didn’t need to know all the reasons why that was stressing him out, that was all.

Khanya nodded. “That’s very understandable, and very common, after such a major life change.”

“Yeah, so everyone says.”

“It’s also very common to feel anxious about it. But anxious decisions usually aren’t good decisions. Why do you feel like you need to figure it out right away? Your basic needs are amply met, you’re healthy, your friends are well, you’re safe and Bucky is safe. So what’s the rush?”

_The rush is that I would like to kiss Bucky Barnes and also marry him, probably, and I can’t do that if I’m just a jobless layabout with no life plans._

“I’m not used to having time, I guess,” he said.

“You have it now,” said Khanya, matter of fact. “And you ought to use some of that time to rest, to, hmm, how do you Americans put it, recharge.”

“I don’t need—”

“Do not give me that,” interrupted Khanya, thumping her staff for emphasis, and Steve startled. “Time spent frozen in a glacier is not rest. Time spent ill as a young man is not rest. These last two weeks have been a good start on rest, but they are not enough. You have been fighting a very long, very difficult war, and finally, you have won it. But you have lost much too. So your lesson is: learn how to rest. Because the people who do not learn to do so break.”

“I can’t just sit around doing _nothing_ , it’s driving me crazy.”

“Rest doesn’t mean doing _nothing_. It just means attending to yourself, and giving yourself time to replenish your energy and your strength. You don’t have to be productive and useful at all times, Steve. This community doesn’t require it of you. What it requires is that you are a _part_ of this community, and that you are well. That is all.”

“Natasha said we should try to live in the world, now. I’m trying, I just—I’m not used to it, I guess.”

He must have been used to it, at some point, surely he must have. The knowledge was buried, though, hidden and drowning under years and years of war and fighting, under all the time spent on watch and on the run.

“Your friend has the right of it. Consider this your homework assignment: take two weeks to try to do restful things, however you want to define restful, so long as that does not involve running off to fight something. If after two weeks, you’re still feeling so unsettled, then we will try a different lesson plan. Alright?”

“Alright.”

* * *

 

“So my therapy homework is to learn how to rest,” Steve told Bucky at the end of the day over dinner. “Did you get that homework assignment too?”

Bucky lifted a wry eyebrow at him over his plate of stir fry. They’d cooked for themselves tonight, just a simple stir fry and salad in deference to the heat. After only a few shifts in the communal kitchen, Bucky had deemed him competent enough to actually handle the stir fry, and Steve thought he’d done a pretty good job.

“That wasn’t something I needed an assignment for, no, on account of how my brain damage kinda demanded it,” said Bucky. Steve opened his mouth to apologize, but Bucky cut him off. “Don’t, I’m not fishing for sympathy. It’s just the truth. I needed to take it easy to finish healing, so I did.”

“I kinda wish it was that easy for me.”

“It wasn’t easy, Steve. It was just necessary.”

Bucky could always reduce even the most difficult things to matter of fact necessity, or at least, to what he considered necessity. Steve had always thought it was a big part of what made Bucky such a good man: if Bucky decided something was necessary, whether that was working two jobs to make rent or putting himself in the line of fire to save someone else, he would simply do it, without fuss or complaint. More often than not, Bucky’s idea of necessity involved looking after others, even at his own expense. Steve was glad that for once, Bucky had decided it was just as necessary to look after himself.

“I know. I’m glad you did get that rest. I’m just sorry it wasn’t longer.”

Bucky shrugged. “It was long enough. And fighting Thanos, helping to keep Wakanda safe—it was worth it.” They ate in silence for a long moment, then Bucky asked, “Is it such a hard thing? Taking a break?”

Bucky was looking down at his plate and spearing a few pieces of carrot with his fork. The movement seemed casual, but there was an uncertain and unhappy downward curve to his mouth that Steve hated to see. When Bucky finally looked up at him, there was fondness in his eyes, yes, but sadness too. Like he already knew what Steve’s answer would be.

“I’m having a hard time with it, I guess, yeah. I’m not used to it. But I can learn. I’m gonna figure it out, I promise. I—I know it’s important.”

He had to figure it out. He had to convince Bucky that he could do this, that he could set the shield and the work aside, that the next fight wouldn’t separate them again. Bucky was living in the world, had worked and fought so hard to get to a place where he felt safe enough to, and Steve intended to live in the world with him, whatever that took.

* * *

 

“I am going to watch Star Trek,” declared Steve the next day, and stationed himself on the couch with the intent of staying there all day. “It’s been on my list for years, and I’m gonna watch it. That’s resting, right? Bingewatching is resting.”

At least, Steve knew Sam thought so, since on days when he was too drained to face superheroing or life on the run, he declared it a couch potato day and settled down to watch his way through some TV show or movie series. Steve hadn’t begrudged Sam the time or the rest, but he had never been able to join him for more than a couple hours before he got antsy.

“I guess, yeah. Which Star Trek?” asked Bucky.

“What?”

“Which Star Trek? There’s like, a lot. There’s all the movies, the show from the 60s, all the other Star Treks after it, the new movies, the new show—”

“How do you _know_ all this?” Steve demanded, and Bucky shrugged.

“It was on my list too.”

“Then come watch with me. And pick a Star Trek since you seem to know way more than I do.”

“Yeah, okay.”

* * *

 

Three episodes in, and Steve had realized two things: 1) he still wasn’t a fan of bingewatching and 2) Bucky goddamn loved Star Trek. Neither of those things were a surprise, really. Steve was beginning to suspect that he was just bad at this whole rest and relaxation thing, and Bucky had always loved science fiction. Steve had kind of thought living through his own version of a pulp novel would have taken off some of the shine for Bucky, but no. Bucky was watching Star Trek: Whatever with rapt attention. While the show wasn’t keeping Steve’s attention too well, he at least had the consolation prize of seeing Bucky sprawled out on the couch, his feet in Steve’s lap.

“Wakanda is amazing and all, but this is the future I was really hoping to end up in,” said Bucky as he watched the Captain ask a computer for tea, Earl Grey, hot.

“There are probably voice-activated versions of those little one-serving coffee machines,” said Steve, and Bucky twisted his head away from staring starry-eyed at the TV show being projected from a kimoyo bead to glare at Steve.

“I meant the _spaceship_ , Steven. The enormous, cool spaceship full of scientists and aliens and shit.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve done that, and it was not all that great.” He squinted at the screen. “Being on a spaceship full of scientists and aliens and shit wasn’t anything like this, actually.”

Bucky made an eloquent noise of pure disgust and flopped back down to stare at the show, though not without taking the opportunity to poke Steve viciously with his toes.

“I cannot fucking believe you got to go into outer space and you didn’t even appreciate it properly. Outer space!! Did you even look out the ship’s window?” asked Bucky mournfully.

Steve was glad Bucky was focused on the projection so he couldn’t see whatever look was on Steve’s face right now, because he _had_ looked out the ship’s window. He’d taken one look out into the vastness of space, and he’d lost it. Not out of any newly discovered phobia of space, no. But because he’d known—Bucky would have loved it.

“I was kinda busy, Buck,” was all Steve said, and wrapped his hand around Bucky’s bony ankle, stroking his thumb over the nearly faded scar there—an old souvenir from when Bucky’d torn his ankle up on some rocks at the beach, back in ‘28 or ‘29. Steve probably shouldn’t have felt so ludicrously tender over Bucky’s dumb skinny ankles, but that did seem to be what was happening here. Bucky curled and uncurled his toes against Steve’s thigh, and Steve could hear him huff out a happy little sigh, so he kept stroking little circles against the soft skin of Bucky’s ankle.

“You didn’t do any cool zero gravity tricks either, did you,” said Bucky, and now his tone was distinctly accusatory. Steve didn’t even have to look at him to know he was scowling adorably, but he looked anyway, and grinned when he saw it.

“So what I’m getting from this is that you wanna go to space. We could make that happen, you know. I know people.”

Bucky wrinkled his nose, not taking his eyes off the show. The Enterprise crew members were talking seriously. It seemed like two-thirds of any episode was just uniformed crew members speaking gravely about some plan or another, which wasn’t really what Steve thought was desirable in a show set in outer space.

“Yeah, I _know_ the space people you know, Steve, and I’m not so sure I wanna head to space with them. Seems like they all get in a lot of space messes.”

“Hmm, fair point,” said Steve, thinking of the Guardians. He still had no idea if the Guardians were a crew of space criminals or space crimefighters, and Danvers hadn’t quite answered any questions about just what authority she had to go around punching things with her laser fists. Thor was respectable, he supposed. “But if you wanna go to space, I’m sure one of them would be willing to give you a short joyride. Just around the solar system.”

Bucky shushed him. “Shh, the show is getting good,” he said, and admittedly, something other than talking did seem to be happening now.

Steve still wasn’t all that interested; instead he was plotting ways to get Bucky a trip into space for his birthday. Maybe if he found something to make it worth Rocket’s while...

* * *

 

He lasted for two more episodes before Bucky caught on that Steve was not into this bingewatching thing.

“How about you try reading a book instead, Captain Fidgety?” said Bucky, who was definitely very into the bingewatching thing, at least when it came to Star Trek. “I’m guessing you’ve still got a lot of those on your list too.”

Reading a book got him through the rest of the day, but that night, Steve stared up at the bedroom ceiling grimly. He couldn’t get through his two weeks of mandated rest like this, he just couldn’t, which meant that Steve was already failing at his therapy homework and it had only been one day.

“Rogers, I can practically hear you thinking,” grumbled Bucky from the other side of the bed.

“I can’t do the TV watching and reading thing again tomorrow,” he said. “It’s just—it’s too much like all those times I had to stay in bed because I was too sick to do anything else.”

“Okay, so try something new tomorrow.”

“What the hell else counts as resting? If I’m bad at watching TV and reading books, which as far as I can tell are basically the two main ways people take a break nowadays, then what the hell can I even _do_?”

“Oh my god,” groaned Bucky. “You’re so fucking dramatic. Pick up a craft or something, I don’t know. Or do art, when’s the last time you sketched or painted?”

Steve turned over and frowned at Bucky’s broad back. “Do you think Khanya would consider that work on account of how I used to do art for a living? I think she would. I have to try something else. What do _you_ do?”

This felt uncomfortably like cribbing from Bucky’s homework, but desperate measures and all.

“Apart from reading? A lotta rambling around the countryside. And I meditate with Thandiwe, which I’m guessing is a no go for you, on account of how it’s literally sitting around doing nothing.”

“Wait, is _that_ what you two do when you go off together?”

“Most of the time, yeah.”

Steve contemplated it. It certainly seemed to do Bucky good, given how he usually came back looking calm and at ease, but then Bucky had a far, far deeper well of stillness and patience than Steve could ever hope to have.

“Yeah, no, I can’t do that. I’ll ask Sam for ideas tomorrow,” said Steve. He couldn’t see Bucky’s face, and yet, somehow, Bucky’s general body language was distinctly dubious. “Sam is a _normal person_ , he’ll know,” added Steve.

Bucky muttered something that sounded like, “Is he though?” and Steve poked him hard in the side. “Sure, yeah, Sam will know. Now go to sleep, Steve.”

* * *

 

 _I genuinely do not understand what retired people do_ , Steve texted Sam the next morning during his morning “run.” He had yet to build up the endurance for anything more than a plodding two mile job, but he had to start somewhere. _There are a lot of hours in the day to fill, Sam_

_Isn’t Bucky basically retired? Why don’t you just do what he does?_

_Tried that, mixed success_ , responded Steve. Sam could never learn about the goats.

 _Go fishing, it’s what my gramps spent like 60% of his retirement doing_.

Steve eyed the lake, glimmering brightly in the sunshine. _Yeah, okay_.

After he cooled down from his jog, he went in search of Bucky, and found him in the village garden, holding a child of indeterminate age and talking softly either to her or to the plants, or maybe to both. Steve took a moment to appreciate the sight, safe and idyllic. Or maybe not so idyllic, he thought, as he got close enough to see the tear tracks on the little girl’s face.

“Hey, who’s this?” asked Steve, and tried to give the girl a comforting smile. She hid her face in Bucky’s shoulder.

“This is Amina. Amina, say hi to Steve?” She mumbled something that might have been a hello. “Amina’s not feeling up to school today, so she’s hanging out with me for a bit. What’s up?”

“Are there fish in the lake?” Steve asked.

“Uh, yeah, I think so. It’s safe to swim in too, not too deep. Why?”

“I was gonna try fishing.”

Bucky blinked at him in confusion. “You don’t even like fish.”

“That’s not the point. Anyway, _you_ like fish. I’ll make you fish for dinner,” Steve decided. “Who can I ask about...fishing stuff? A canoe, or—”

Now Bucky was smiling. “Fish for dinner, huh? Someone’s got confidence in his fishing abilities.”

Steve narrowed his eyes at Bucky. “How hard could it be?”

Amina lifted her face from Bucky’s shoulder and squinted dubiously at him. That didn’t really bode well for his fishing success.

“Hmm. Fishing was Wilson’s suggestion, wasn’t it.” Steve didn’t confirm or deny this, and Bucky continued, “Well, ask Liwa. He looks after the little boats or canoes or whatever they’re called.”

So Steve tracked down Liwa, who informed him that there was a strict quota on fishing, so as not to overfish and deplete the lake of its fish population, but that Steve was welcome to give it a try, so long as he threw back any fish over his quota of two a day.

“Have you ever fished before?” asked Liwa.

“Not really. Figure it’s not too hard to learn though, right?”

“I suppose not,” said Liwa, and handed Steve a pole and assorted other fishing accoutrements. There were somewhat more of them than expected. Liwa took pity on him and gave him a quick overview. Really, fishing didn’t seem all that hard. It was mostly just waiting, right? “Come, let’s get the boat ready.”

The boat was small and wooden, little more than a rowboat, its grain fine and smooth, clearly lovingly maintained. It had two short benches, and a little chest up near the boat’s prow, probably full of more supplies.

“Does it, uh, have a motor or does it maybe hover—”

Liwa gave him a blank look, and raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said, drawing the word out. “It’s just a rowboat. The lake is quite small, there’s no need for anything more.”

“Right, yes. Of course. Just, you know, you never know in Wakanda,” said Steve, because just the other day, he’d put a mug in what he’d thought was just another one of Bucky’s cabinets, only to find the mug icy and frozen when he next pulled it out, because that cabinet was apparently also the icebox.

“I suppose not,” allowed Liwa dubiously, then he showed Steve how the oars worked and pointed out the best spots for fishing. They waded into the lake together, and once Steve had scrambled into the rowboat, Liwa gave it a mighty push and Steve was on his way.

“Thank you!” he called out, and Liwa waved.

“Good luck!”

Steve rowed out into the center of the lake, a task that made him embarrassingly breathless. If he’d still had the serum, it would have taken him half a dozen strong strokes of the oars, if that, but he didn’t have the serum anymore, so he was stuck huffing and puffing and doing his best with thinner, shorter arms. When he figured he was at the right spot, he pulled the oars back in, and got his fishing pole, line, and bait ready. Casting presented some difficulties the first few tries, and he looked around furtively to make sure no one was watching his awkward first efforts. Thankfully the villagers all had better things to do than watch Steve attempt to fish, because no one paused in their daily activities. The only audience Steve had was a haughty crane stepping carefully among the reeds on the far side of the lake.

Once he got a good cast of the line out into the lake, Steve settled in to wait for a bite. He waited. He waited longer. Well, okay. The fish were shy today. He took a deep breath. He could be patient. He could…appreciate nature. The lake was lovely after all, the water was calm and sloshing gently against the rowboat, and the sun was shining down on the water, turning it into a sea of sparkles. The sound of bird calls and the distant murmur of conversation drifted towards him over the water.

Steve supposed it was relaxing. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon, anyway. He checked on the line: still no bites. Was the bait still there? Had some sneaky fish grabbed it already? He reeled in the line to check: nope, bait was still there. He sighed and cast out again.

Fifteen minutes later, he concluded that fishing was worse than a stakeout.

What possible enjoyment did people get out of this? What was he supposed to do, just _wait_ for dumb fish to nibble on the bait? And what was he supposed to do while he waited, be _alone_ with his _thoughts_? His thoughts about how he had no idea what to do with himself now?

He sighed and fidgeted, and the rowboat rocked.

What would Sam say, he wondered. Sam would say to _be present in the moment_ , probably.

The moment was boring. The fish continued to avoid his fishing line and its bait. The lake, admittedly, continued to be beautiful.

His thoughts, as always, drifted towards Bucky. Bucky, who’d achieved something like peace in this life he’d built. A peace that looked good on him, but that just like Bucky himself, still seemed unobtainable to Steve, close enough to touch but not close enough to really have. Maybe neither of them were for Steve to have at all, not peace and not Bucky either. Bucky might not want Steve as he was now. Which was fine. It was enough, what they already had. Steve just wanted to know, one way or another. He wanted to try.

There was a tug on the line, and he jumped, making the boat sway. A fish! Finally! He reeled it in, gentle and steady, to discover….a really pretty small fish. Should he toss it back? It flopped and thrashed on the hook. Would the fish be okay if he tossed it back? Surely this fish was too small to feed anyone. Steve threw it back. Half an hour later, he regretted that choice.

It took another hour for him to catch another fish. It was a damned good thing that neither Steve’s livelihood nor his continued survival depended on his fishing abilities, because that didn’t seem like a good time to fish ratio. He eyed his one fish; it was enough to feed Steve, but definitely wouldn’t stretch to feed Bucky. One more hour, he told himself. And if he’d caught another fish by then, great, if not, well. He’d tried.

He spent fifteen minutes wondering if there was some secret fishing technique he was missing, because surely there was something more to fishing than just…waiting. Maybe if he threw some more bait in the water? That would attract more fish, right? He was about to try it when he felt a fast, sharp tug on the line. He kept a firm grip on the pole and moved to start reeling in the line, only to meet an unexpected amount of resistance. The line jerked again, strong enough now to pull Steve forward a little.

“Huh,” said Steve, and tried to pull the pole back. It didn’t shift. Instead, the line went taut. “Oh shit,” he muttered, and then the fight was on.

* * *

Liwa was waiting for him back on shore, smiling broadly. “Not bad for your first time!” he said as he helped Steve out of the rowboat and back onto shore.

“I can’t believe people do this for fun,” gritted out Steve.

Despite not falling into the lake, he was soaking wet, his arms felt like limp noodles, and he was pretty sure he was gonna have a bruise from where the second fish’s tail had slapped him in the face.

“You didn’t find it relaxing?”

“No.”

Liwa laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, at least you were successful! Look at that beauty, it’ll make a fine meal!”

Steve looked at the second fish he’d caught, and yeah, sure, it would make a good meal for even Bucky’s super soldier appetite: the damned fish that Steve had spent a viciously fought ten minutes trying to catch was as long as his arm and had to weigh at least twenty pounds. Bucky had better appreciate this fish.

“Sure hope so.”

* * *

When he got back to the cottage, two freshly cleaned and gutted fishes in hand, he found Shuri and Bucky there already, sitting across from each other at the small kitchen table. Steve thought maybe she was here to check on Bucky’s arm, but no, she and Bucky appeared to just be staring at each other in silence. Or, Bucky was staring, and Shuri was glaring.

“Hey Shuri,” Steve greeted her carefully.

“Hi Steve,” she said, without breaking her narrow-eyed glare at Bucky.

“So, uh, I tried out fishing, and I actually caught some fish! You staying for dinner?” he asked her. “Because we have…a lot of fish now.”

Shuri didn’t answer him, only hummed and kept glaring at Bucky. There seemed to be a whole conversation happening there, and Steve had no idea what was going on.

Bucky did, apparently, because despite the fact that Shuri hadn’t said anything, he burst out with, “Listen, I know what I’m doing, okay!” Then, without breaking his staring contest with Shuri, “So fishing went well?” he asked Steve.

“I mean, I caught a couple fish—” started Steve, brandishing the fish that no one had yet actually looked at.

“Since when do you fish anyway?” demanded Shuri, still not looking away from Bucky.

“Since he’s working on learning how to rest on orders from Khanya,” Bucky answered for him. “Which is why I am being supportive and understanding. Like how best friends are.”

“Oh, is that what this is,” said Shuri, now with a ferocious scowl on her face. “Because I thought you were going to—”

Before she could say just what it was she thought Bucky was going to do, Bucky finally tore his gaze away from Shuri to address Steve. There was a spreading flush on Bucky’s cheeks that made Steve grin. Shuri was up to something that was flustering Bucky, which never failed to amuse Steve. Bucky wasn’t, generally speaking, all that easy to fluster, but Shuri always managed it with little effort.

“You caught fish!” Bucky said, with some desperation, then he blinked when he got a look at said fish. “Holy shit, you caught a really big fish.”

“Yeah, and I don’t see just what the hell is supposed to be restful about fishing. It was like a stakeout, but even more boring and with the added possibility of drowning.”

“So fishing’s not going to be how you’re going to relax for the next couple weeks, I take it,” said Bucky, smiling up at him.

“Nope. But at least I got you fresh fish for dinner,” Steve said, smiling back.

Shuri scrubbed at her face and groaned into her hands. “I can fix your brain, but I cannot fix what a disaster you are, Bucky Barnes!” she said, and got up to leave.

“Um, am I missing something…?” asked Steve, only to be ignored.

“I have a plan, I told you!” Bucky said to Shuri, which only earned him a withering look.

“Uh huh, sure,” said Shuri, then she sighed, and the exasperation on her face softened. She leaned over and tapped a finger on Bucky’s tablet where it was resting on the kitchen table. “Now this, this is the start of a good plan. Tenere will be happy to work on it with you.”

“Yeah?” asked Bucky with a nervous smile. “I’m not—it’s not a totally crazy idea?”

“No, not at all,” said Shuri with something like gentleness. “But seriously, get your shit together.”

Bucky sighed, and stood up to see Shuri out. “Working on it. Sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? Me and Steve can’t finish this enormous fish alone.”

“No, I have meetings back in Birnin Zana,” she said, and whatever grief she was giving Bucky, she must not have been totally serious about it, because they hugged when she said her goodbyes.

“What was that about?” Steve asked. 

Bucky shrugged and looked down, biting at his lower lip. That was a lot of tells at once, thought Steve, and resolved not to let Bucky get away with any deflections.

“Just—school stuff. Classes. Um, would you mind—I don’t want to—I’m not sure yet, I guess, and I don’t want to—”

Steve relaxed, on familiar ground now. This was just Bucky’s usual habit of being cagey about any plan he hadn’t yet nailed down.

“Hey, yeah, of course. Take your time, Buck. I’m here if you wanna talk anything out.”

“Thanks,” said Bucky, relaxing into a quick, sweet smile. “Now, do you have any idea how to cook a whole fish?”

* * *

Steve slept in the next morning. It was actually kind of hard to do, once Bucky got up for the day and left the bed significantly colder, but sleeping in counted as an undeniable rest activity, so Steve was sleeping in. He got up when it stopped feeling pleasantly indulgent and more like being sick in bed. Which was, okay, only about forty-five minutes later than he usually woke up, so Bucky was still at the kitchen table drinking his morning coffee.

“Hey, you’ve got a package,” said Bucky, nodding his head to indicate the box on the kitchen table.

“From where?” asked Steve. He sure as hell hadn’t ordered anything, and the plain cardboard box offered no clues, apart from being addressed to _STEVE ROGERS, WAKANDA_. 

“No idea, but there aren’t exactly a lot of people who know your exact address, so I’m guessing it’s one of your friends. Amazon doesn’t exactly deliver out here.”

When Steve opened the box, he knew who it was from. There was no name on the plain notecard sitting on top of the packing paper, but he knew that brisk, slanted handwriting, and he knew who would have sent him this particular message.

_For living in the world._

Beneath the crumpled up packing paper, Steve found a beautiful sketchbook, a few paintbrushes, and one set each of paints, pencils, and pastels; Natasha hedging her bets on just what medium Steve wanted to work in, since she’d never seen him do anything more than doodle in the margins of reports or on scrap paper. He touched the the brushes and paints carefully. Steve wasn’t familiar with the brand names, not anymore, but he knew they were the best. Natasha wouldn’t have bothered with anything less. He opened the sketchbook next, and felt an echo of the old thrill: a blank page, with thick paper and an invitingly smooth surface, and the anticipation of filling it.

“You gonna fill that sketchbook up?” asked Bucky quietly.

There was a soft look on Bucky’s face, and he was wearing one of Steve’s old shirts today, a pale blue one that made his eyes look especially clear and lambent in the early morning light. There were a lot of ways Steve wanted to put Bucky in this sketchbook, but Bucky like this—gentle with the morning’s quiet and at peace with the work of the day to come—was the way Steve wanted to draw him first.

“I think I’m gonna give it a try, yeah.”

Or maybe he’d draw Bucky like this, instead, with that bright and sweet smile that hadn’t changed since Bucky was a kid, the one that always felt like the best gift Bucky had ever given him, every single time.

“I’m glad,” Bucky said, and Steve swallowed a wordless sound of dismay when Bucky covered that smile by taking another sip of coffee.

“Got any requests?” he asked. “First decent thing I draw is all yours.”

When Bucky put his mug of coffee back down, his smile had turned distinctly mischievous.

“How about you immortalize the goats in art?” 

Steve laughed and aimed a kick at him under the table.

* * *

Steve spent the day out and about the village, sketchbook and pencils in hand. He was long, long out of practice at anything other than doodling and the odd fast sketch, and his first efforts came out hesitant and childish. But it only took a morning’s worth of practice before his sketches started to turn out serviceable, and even nice. He ended up giving an impromptu art lesson to the village kids too, who were all gratifyingly impressed with Steve’s drawings.

Because Bucky had asked, however jokingly, Steve even drew the damned goats. He rendered them in cartoonish caricature as miniature devils who’d escaped hell, and left the drawing for Bucky to find. For Natasha, he sent a photo of his drawing of the cottage and the lake beyond it, the world he was living in right now. She sent back a long row of heart emojis in response.

As much as he’d enjoyed spending the day drawing though, he couldn’t quite imagine filling all the rest of his days with only art. He loved it, was good at it, may have once been thrilled to make a living at it, and yet...

“Good day?” asked Bucky, as he flipped through Steve’s sketchbook with a small smile.

“Yeah, yeah it was,” he said.

Bucky looked up at him, and as always, he saw too much. “But?”

Steve lifted one shoulder and smiled, like it wasn’t a big deal. “It’s not enough.”

“No one thing has to be enough, Steve.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with the elders, you’re starting to sound like them,” he joked.

Bucky’s mouth twisted like there was something else he wanted to say, but instead he just closed Steve’s sketchbook and slid it back across the table towards Steve.

“Yeah, well, I’m glad you’re drawing again, anyway.”

* * *

Steve’s only plan for the next day was to try out his new paints. Wakanda’s countryside offered more than enough tempting options for landscape paintings, certainly more than Brooklyn ever had, and Steve figured Khanya would approve of painting out in nature as a way to relax or recharge or whatever. It seemed that Bucky had other plans for Steve though.

“C’mon, let’s spar today,” he said, already nimbly rocking back and forth from foot to foot in a boxing bounce step. He was wearing one of Steve’s old workout shirts, and Steve was pretty sure he could actually see the muscle tone of Bucky’s abs through the shirt with how tightly it was clinging. Steve wasn’t even going to get into the nipple situation happening. It was warm out, and yet, you wouldn’t know it looking at Bucky’s general chest area.

 _Why did no one ever tell me my goddamn shirts were so obscene?_ At least Bucky was wearing entirely unremarkable sweatpants. Steve had to be grateful for small blessings, at this point. Not that anything about Bucky was small. Oh god.

“Steve! Are you listening?”

Steve tore his eyes away from Bucky’s...everything and focused on his face instead. “What?”

“Let’s spar! When’s the last time you punched something?”

“I don’t need to punch anything,” said Steve, and the look of total disbelief on Bucky’s face was not especially gratifying.

“Seriously, I think you’ve just gone the longest stretch you’ve ever gone without punching anyone or anything, and honestly, I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy for you. C’mon, let’s go, didn’t you say you wanted to start training again? We can get started today!”

This was an aggressive level of cheer. It was making Steve suspicious. Bucky looked innocent, sure, but then he usually did on account of the big and earnest blue eyes.

“I said I wasn’t gonna fight anymore, and I meant it, Buck.”

Bucky frowned. “I know. But sparring’s not exactly getting back into the fight, and I figure you oughta get used to fighting when you’re this size again, just in case.”

Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about that _just in case_ and what it implied.

“Alright, fine. But I’m not gonna be able to do much,” he warned.

“You’ll do fine!” said Bucky.

* * *

They headed to the half-shaded outdoor training area the retired War Dogs used, and they each warmed up separately. Steve wasn’t _entirely_ clueless about how to train in this smaller version of his body; Natasha had taken him aside back at Avengers HQ, and trained him in much the same way she had when he’d been twice the size, only this time taking into account his “squishy normal human weaknesses.” So he knew how to stretch properly, and he had some basic idea of his simultaneously new and old limits and limitations. After so many years with the serum, there was no escaping how wrong it felt to spar and train in this body. He was uncomfortably reminded of one of his more common anxiety dreams: losing the serum mid-fight.

As if that weren’t enough, Steve felt entirely ill-prepared to go up against Bucky too, even in a friendly practice sparring match where Bucky carefully held back his strength and pulled his punches before they could land. There was a time when Steve would have been furious and resentful about that, and he still was, kind of. If they’d done this before Steve lost the serum, they wouldn’t have had to be careful at all. But Bucky’s caution was just as much for Bucky himself as it was for Steve, and he wasn’t wrong to be cautious. That didn’t mean Steve had to like it.

He liked even less the feeling that going up against Bucky like this had all the use of going up against a brick wall. A sexy, handsome brick wall that was doing its best to be encouraging, but that still bruised Steve’s knuckles and sent him sprawling on his ass every two minutes. At least they weren’t practicing holds, thought Steve grimly. That would lead to a whole other problematic situation.

“You are still trying to fight like a larger man,” someone called out. Steve turned to see Lwazi, who was practicing with a wooden staff. He didn’t pause in his complex, graceful movements as he asked, “Did you never fight like this before? When you weren’t superpowered, I mean.”

Bucky laughed, and Steve took the opportunity to jab him sharply in the stomach, which at least made Bucky lose his breath a little.

“I did. Not, uh, very successfully, but I did.”

“Steve was a real scrapper, back in the day,” said Bucky, no small amount of pride in his voice. Steve was glad the flush of physical exertion covered his blush.

Lwazi grinned and stopped his staff practice. “Cute,” he said. “Seriously though, you are still fighting like you’re superpowered, Steve. The same strategies will not work when you don’t have the brute force and enhanced reflexes to back them up. And you, Ingcuka, are too preoccupied with being careful, as you well know and as we have already told you.”

Bucky winced. “I just don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“That’s very thoughtful, but you can still go a little harder than this whole _I’m sparring with helpless kittens_ thing you have going,” said Lwazi, and Bucky snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Alright, Elder, what should we be doing instead, then?” asked Bucky.

“Steve ought to train with someone who’s never fought or sparred with him before, and you need to trust your sparring partners more. Here, I will help.”

Lwazi took effortless charge of them then, and he trained and sparred with Steve until the day grew too hot to continue. Steve had to admit, it went better than the over-careful sparring with Bucky had gone. Lwazi was patient and funny, and highly skilled; what he lacked in the easy grace of young bones, he made up for in economical movements designed to conserve strength. He walked Steve through a few new ways to train and fight that felt right with Steve’s body as it was now, right enough that Steve could finally take some joy in the training, in the way his body rose to the challenge instead of creaking and hurting and gasping the way it would have in 1939. If Lwazi noticed the way Steve’s eyes kept drifting over towards where Bucky was sparring with other War Dogs, he didn’t say anything.

Instead, he asked, “So what’s the purpose of this sparring, huh? Just keeping fit, or are you planning to get back out there, into the fight?”

“I’m done with fighting,” said Steve, and Lwazi snorted.

“You don’t train like a man who’s done with fighting.”

Steve thought of Lwazi’s earlier staff twirling, how intent and precise he’d been as the staff had whirled through the air. It hadn’t had the look of a leisurely retirement workout.

“Neither do you.”

“Old habits,” said Lwazi easily, but somehow, Steve didn’t believe him.

He wondered if Bucky didn’t believe Steve either, when he said he was done.

* * *

They had dinner at the village kitchen that night, and sat outside with the old War Dogs, who were in fine form, teasing each other over old war stories.

“Ey, Lwazi, you training up a new apprentice?” asked one of the War Dogs, nodding cheerfully in Steve’s direction.

“Nah, me and Captain Rogers here are out of the fighting and spying game, aren’t we?” said Lwazi with a grin that Steve tried to return. He was starting to get the sense that no one believed both him and Lwazi about that.

The feeling was confirmed when Liwa snorted with showy disbelief. “Never thought I’d see the day, Lwazi, that’s for certain. You sure village life is exciting enough for you, or can we expect some kind of adventure to find you here?”

“I have plenty to do!” said Lwazi. “I’ll have you know I am writing my memoirs! And many proposals for the Council and the King.”

Bucky elbowed Steve. “Now there’s an idea. You wanna try writing your memoirs? Reveal all the Howlies’ and the Avengers’ dirty secrets?”

“Dangerous suggestion there, Buck, considering how many embarrassing stories I could tell about _you_ ,” murmured Steve, and smiled sweetly at Bucky, who just laughed, the jerk.

“You’re doing paperwork _on purpose_!?” said Lindiwe, and gave an exaggerated shudder and grin before diving back into her food.

“I do not believe it!” said Khanya. “You are up to something, Lwazi, and I want in!”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathered villagers, and Steve had the distinct feeling he was missing something.

“Oh, _now_ you all say you want in, huh? What happened to ‘Lwazi, that’s a terrible idea’ and ‘Lwazi, that is not part of your mission,’ and ‘Lwazi, please do not blow that up’?”

“I need all of these stories,” said Bucky, leaning forward with wide-eyed interest. Thandiwe, sitting across from them, flashed a startling smile and wink at Bucky.

“I’ll tell you some later,” she said, and Bucky beamed at her.

“Ohohoho, so there is something to be in on, is there, Lwazi?” crowed Phakamile.

“Tell us!” chorused assorted villagers.

“Yeah, don’t leave us languishing here. It’s bad enough we all retired just before things got really interesting out there,” said Liwa, to a chorus of agreement.

“What do you mean?” asked Steve.

“Wakanda revealing itself, of course! And aliens, and superheroes…”

“Overrated,” said Steve dryly, earning a wave of laughter.

Before Lwazi could offer any details or explanations, a number of the villagers’ kimoyo beads chirped, including Steve and Bucky’s. When Steve checked his communication bead, he saw there was a message from the Border Guard incoming.

“Here, I will play it for all of us,” said Khanya, and projected the holographic message into the air above them.

A Wakandan in the distinctive blue and white of the Border Guard appeared, and began to speak in Xhosa. Steve’s own kimoyo bead, with no input from him, provided a running translation.

“Attention: there is currently a security incident occurring at the border. All Border villages are advised to engage their shields and remain in their villages. Villages in Zone One, please shelter in place and stand by for deployment of Border Guard teams.”

“A security incident? What’s that mean?” asked Steve.

Bucky frowned. “Who knows, could be anything from some people trying to sneak across the border to an all out attack.” He shook his head and shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “C’mon, let’s get dinner cleaned up.”

Steve gaped at him. “Get dinner cleaned up? We should be—I don’t know, helping secure the village or something, shouldn’t we?”

“That’s what the shields are for, Steve.” He nodded at Khanya and Thandiwe, who had already gotten up from the picnic table and were headed out of the village’s center. “They’re going to set up some perimeter shielding.”

“Right. Then there should be a watch—shit, I don’t even have any weapons here—”

“Yeah, no, you don’t, and neither do I, apart from my arm, so we’re gonna help clean up dinner.”

Liwa came past and clapped Steve on the shoulder. “We’ve got the watch handled,” he said, and went to join the small crowd forming around Lwazi, all of them murmuring intently.

Bucky was already rounding up the village kids, directing some of them to gather plates and cups and take them back to the village kitchen, and sending the others back to their own homes if their parents hadn’t already summoned them home. Lacking anything better to do, he followed Bucky to the kitchen, where cleanup was in progress.

“This is seriously all we’re doing?” demanded Steve. If there was really some kind of emergency at Wakanda’s border, he didn’t want to be on dish duty for it. That was worse than being on the dancing monkey USO circuit during the war.

Bucky just raised an eyebrow at him, his expression dangerously mild. He was already clearing leftover food off the dishes into the compost, like this was any other night.

“Yeah, Steve, this is all we’re doing. On account of how we don’t know much about what’s going on, and because it’s the Border Guard’s _job_ to handle any problems in Border Tribe lands.”

“I feel like the War Dogs know something about what’s going on,” said Steve, and Bucky shrugged one shoulder up.

“Yeah, probably. Still doesn’t make it our business.”

“If we’re about to be attacked, I think it’s our business—”

“No one said anything about being attacked. We just know something’s going on at the border, which is miles away from us, and that we’ve been asked to stay put. So that’s what we’re gonna do. And we’re also gonna do these dishes, okay?”

Steve took a deep breath to keep from snapping at Bucky. His heart pounded with the directionless urge to _do_ something, to find his shield, to get a sitrep from someone, anyone. But he was just a civilian, now, and he’d said he was done with fighting. He was trying to prove to Bucky that he was done with fighting, for good, and right now he was doing a pretty shitty job of that. So he did as Bucky asked, and started putting dishes away. Bucky didn’t even try to break the tense silence between them.

It didn’t take long to clean and tidy everything up, and when they went back out into the village center, they saw some of the old War Dogs jogging towards the village perimeter, vibranium staffs and spears in hand. When Khanya came jogging past, Bucky stopped her.

“Hey, we got incoming? What’s going on?” he asked.

“Can we help with anything?” added Steve.

Khanya flashed a quick smile at them, banishing her stern expression for just a moment. “It’s nothing too serious, and we have the shielding set up already. We do have incoming of a sort though, but they are not...how do you Americans put it, they are not coming in hot. You two stay here, wait for any instruction from the Citadel.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Bucky with a lazy salute as she jogged away. “Alright, you heard her, we’re sitting tight.”

The idea of _sitting tight,_ with no news and no intel, felt abruptly intolerable

“We should be out there helping. There’s something going on a few miles from here, we should—”

“Why? Why should we be out there?” demanded Bucky. “You’re not Cap anymore, and this isn’t some alley fight you can barge into. We’ve been asked to stay here, and that’s what we’re gonna do. Let the Border Guard do their damn jobs, Steve.”

“Fine, maybe I’m not Cap anymore, but _you_ could be out there. What are the old War Dogs doing anyway?”

“I was asked to stay here too. If I get orders from T’Challa or General Okoye, then I’ll help.” Bucky’s lips lifted in one-sided, mirthless smile. “Isn’t that what the new Accords are about? To only go in when we’re asked, if the threat isn’t immediate and cataclysmic?”

Fuck. Bucky wasn’t wrong.

“I’m not an enhanced person anymore, the Accords don’t apply,” said Steve, without much heat. It was a dumb evasion and he knew it.

“Uh huh, which just means you’d be a dumbass normal human vigilante if you ran out there into who knows what, just ‘cause you feel like fighting’s the only way to matter.”

“That’s not—that’s not what I think, come on,” he said, hating the way his voice faltered.

He didn’t think that, did he? He certainly didn’t think it of other people. It was just that it felt an awful lot like 1941 again, the faint desperation to do something, anything, that was useful, that mattered, even if it was just to throw himself in the line of fire.

“Yeah? Then why do you think _I_ should be going out to help?” asked Bucky, and this, this wasn’t like 1941 at all. Bucky’s shoulders were hunched up, his arms tightly crossed as if holding some wound. They were too far from any light source for Steve to get a good read on Bucky’s expression, but he was guessing it was a stormy one.

“Don’t twist my words, I never said _should_ , I said you _could_. You don’t have to be stuck here babysitting me.”

“That is not what I’m—”

“Ingcuka!” called out Lwazi, waving at them from the doorway of his cottage on the other side of the village center. “Come, I have a job for you and your man!”

Bucky turned from Steve and stalked towards Lwazi, and he didn’t look back to see if Steve was following him. Steve had to jog to catch up to his long-legged stride.

“What’s the job?” asked Bucky once they’d joined Lwazi inside his cottage.

A hologram was beaming out of Lwazi’s kimoyo bracelet, showing what looked like a map with many moving dots on it.

“So the current situation is that one of my old trainee War Dogs ran into a spot of trouble in the DRC, and she is headed back into Wakanda with trouble nipping at her heels. It’s nothing the Border Guard can’t handle, but Ayana is bringing some people with her too, and they need help.”

“Not prisoners, I’m guessing,” said Bucky.

“Ah, no. A couple dozen children, actually,” said Lwazi, smiling as if this was the best possible news.

“And what’s she doing with a couple dozen children?” asked Steve slowly.

“Well, some of these children are...enhanced, apparently. And unsavory types had planned to traffic them to whoever was willing to pay: militias, terrorists, brothels...Ayana took exception with this, obviously, and lacking anywhere else to safely take them…”

“She’s bringing them here,” finished Bucky. He turned away from the hologram to raise his eyebrows at Lwazi. “The Black Panther know about this?”

Lwazi’s smile got even broader. “Not yet!”

“But _you_ know,” said Bucky, narrowing his eyes at Lwazi.

“Oh, yes, well, I try to support my former trainees! Give them advice, answer their questions…”

Bucky tilted his head and continued when Lwazi trailed off. “Help them smuggle some kidnapped kids to safety?”

“Just mentor things!” said Lwazi, still the very picture of innocence, his dark brown eyes sparkling.

Steve was hard pressed not to burst into laughter.

“Uh huh, okay, what do you need from us then?” asked Steve.

Now Lwazi grew serious, smile fading. “As I said, some of the children are enhanced. And Ingcuka, you are good with children. If you could go meet them, help get them settled and make sure none of the enhanced children will be a threat to others or themselves...Khanya and some of the others have already gone just outside the village to set up some tents for them, and to get food and medical care ready.”

“Of course,” said Bucky, then looked to Steve, his lips quirking into a wry smile, and something wary in his eyes. “You coming with? I know it’s pretty much just _babysitting duty_ , but…”

 _Yeah, okay, that was a fair hit_ , thought Steve, and took it on the chin. He held Bucky’s steady gaze, and nodded. “Yeah, I’m coming with you.”

* * *

The children, when they arrived, were thin and terrified, bruised and battered. Most of them couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t as if Steve hadn’t seen scenes just like this during the war, just like this and even worse, but it was still hard, every time. Harder still when he couldn’t go after the people who’d torn these kids away from their homes and their families, who’d treated these kids like things. A fight wasn’t what was going to help these kids now, though.

What helped them was being treated kindly by the villagers and old War Dogs who were seeing to their wounds and welcoming them into the temporary tents, which definitely weren’t the army camp style tents Steve had been half expecting, and which instead just looked like larger versions of the village’s round cottages, made of some slightly shimmering fabric that almost certainly wasn’t canvas. What helped them was the promise of Wakanda’s safety, for the kids kept asking, with wide eyes, _we’re really in Wakanda? Really?_ What helped them was Bucky, gently assuring them that no one here would ask them to fight or hurt anybody else. What helped them, Steve hoped, were his own attempts to reassure them of their safety, to bring the smaller kids paper and pencils to draw with, to ask them where home was and to hold them when they admitted home was no longer there.

Steve thought it was all going as well as could be expected, until the tent started shaking and one of the kids started shouting.

“This is going to be just like before! You will say you’ve saved us, but you’ll only send us to another refugee camp! And they will find us again, they _always_ find us again! They _know_ , they know what we can do, and no one wants to do anything but use us!”

It was a young woman or girl’s voice, reverberating through the tent as if being blasted through speakers, her accented English marking her as Nigerian to Steve’s admittedly unpracticed ear.

He rushed to the source of the shouting, and found Bucky with a young teenager who was literally shaking where she stood. Not shaking as in trembling, but shaking as vibrating, so fast and so hard that Steve’s eyes had trouble even seeing them properly. There were faint colored blurs around her head, the beads at the end of her braids clacking and clattering against each other. The ground was shaking too, an ominous rumble building under their feet.

“No one will send you away,” said Bucky, low and sure.

“Then someone here will make us, make me—”

“Hey, no, not here,” said Bucky, and stayed sitting on the cot, still and unmoved by the shaking that surrounded them, steadier than a mountain. “You know, I came here too because people kept wanting to use me to hurt people. Didn’t matter what I thought, that I didn’t want to. They made it so I couldn’t say no. I’m like you. Or, not like you, I can’t do, uh, that. Whatever that is. But I’m not your standard human either,” he said, and waggled his vibranium fingers. “And I stayed here because they promised me no one was going to make me hurt anyone, or hurt me, here. Believing them was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I’ve never, for a second, regretted it.”

The teenager’s shaking stopped, and the tent and the ground finally stilled. Steve could finally see her properly, her round face and her tawny eyes opened wide enough to see the whites around her eyes.

“They helped you?” she asked, and she sounded very young.

“Yeah, they did,” said Bucky, steady and gentle and so _sure_. “We can help you too. If you want to leave, you can. But I’d like you to stay, please. At least for a few days.”

She didn’t yet relax, shaking her head and making her beads clack again.

“And then I’ll have to go. You’ll send me...somewhere else. Wakanda doesn’t let people stay. Wakanda wouldn’t let a freak like me stay.”

Steve saw Bucky hesitate then, and Steve was about to interrupt, to throw in some reassurance, some promise—if she couldn’t stay here, maybe she could go to Avengers HQ, maybe Wanda could help her—but then he saw T’Challa enter the tent, and stride straight towards them and the girl.

“That used to be true, yes,” he said with a gentle smile. “But we are trying to do better, now. Hello, I’m T’Challa, King of Wakanda. What’s your name?”

Steve hung back and watched Bucky and T’Challa with the kid, some slow epiphany stealing over him like the dawn. He wanted to be able to make a promise to kids like this. He wanted to be able to say: _someone will speak up for you, someone will be out there, making sure you don’t think you’re a freak who can’t find sanctuary anywhere. Someone will make sure you never have to hurt anyone._

He remembered what Nakia had said, that the growing numbers of enhanced people needed an advocate. When she’d made the offer, Steve had imagined it as the new version of being the USO’s dancing monkey, as a busywork sinecure of a job, filling his time with making speeches and shaking hands and doing nothing that actually mattered. But it could mean this. It could mean demanding safety and freedom for kids like this, kids like Wanda.

It wasn’t the certainty of the fight, no. But this was the promise he could make to Bucky: _I’m staying out of the fight, but I’m going to help people like this, people like you. I’m going to be a different kind of shield._

* * *

Once the children were settled, asleep and resting inside the tents, T’Challa gathered all of the adults together outside.

“I thank you all for your help here. The men seeking these children have been remanded to the appropriate authorities, with a Wakandan guard to ensure they do not go free, and Wakanda is happy to take in these children should we be unable to find their families.” Exclamations of relief and approval rippled through the small crowd. “However, I confess, Wakanda was not aware that it _would_ be taking in these children at all, and War Dog Ayana says only that she acted to secure the children’s safety as best she knew how.” T’Challa’s eye fell on Lwazi, who met his gaze evenly. “That has not been standard War Dog protocol in the past.”

“War Dog protocol must change,” said Lwazi. “I am drafting a number of proposals regarding just that, Your Highness.”

“I see. And have you submitted any such proposals yet?”

“No, but I thought a practical demonstration would provide helpful supporting data for my proposals, Your Highness. A little like when you offered our White Wolf here sanctuary and citizenship. Which has turned out very well, at least in this humble village’s opinion, Your Highness.”

T’Challa’s face remained stern, but his eyes were smiling. “So it has,” he said. “But I thought you were retired, Lwazi.”

“I’m retired, but I am not _done_. Your Highness.”

“Not done doing what?” asked T’Challa.

“I am not done with my service to Wakanda. Wakanda has finally shown its truth, and I want us to use that truth to do good in the light of day, rather than just acting in the shadows of night and hoping it’s enough.”

“Not all your fellow War Dogs agree with you about that, Lwazi,” said T’Challa.

“The ones in this village do,” said Khanya.

T’Challa sighed, and smiled. “I suppose I should not be surprised that this is what a village of old soldiers gets up to, especially when Lwazi is involved. I will look forward to your proposals, Lwazi, though I would request that you not test them out so precipitously in the future.”

Lwazi performed the Wakandan salute crisply, and bowed. “My King.”

“So does that mean the children can stay here?” asked Bucky. He held T’Challa’s gaze, and something passed between them that Steve couldn’t parse.

“If we can’t find living families or safe situations with those families for them, then yes. I will send social workers tomorrow, but until then, I trust this village can look after them?” A chorus of _yes my King_ followed. “Good. Now, I must return to the Citadel to begin making arrangements. Thank you again, everyone.”

“Um, excuse me, before you leave—” Steve said, and T’Challa turned to him. “The thing Nakia suggested I do? I’d like to do it. I’m not sure where to start, but—”

T’Challa grinned broadly at him. “I think this situation here is an excellent start,” he said warmly. “I will let her know.”

* * *

“What’s the thing Nakia suggested you do?” asked Bucky, his voice low and hushed in the late night quiet of the village. 

They were walking slowly back towards their cottage, lingering in the cool and balmy night air. It wasn’t weariness that was making them dawdle; instead it felt like anticipation. Steve was energized with his decision and what it meant, a sort of rebirth just like stepping out of the Vita-Ray chamber had been. _Soon, soon_ , thought Steve, and kept glancing at Bucky, at his dark and fine profile. Steve’s steps kept weaving closer towards his radiating warmth, so that they bumped arms occasionally.

“Nakia suggested that I could be a kind of, uh, global advocate for enhanced people like these kids. Speak up for them, make sure people don’t abuse and exploit them, whether they’re superheroes or not. I don’t have any details yet, obviously, it’s just an idea, but—”

He glanced over at Bucky again, and saw the gleam and shine of his eyes in the dark, the flash of his smile.

“Steve, that’s a great idea. That’s—that’s really amazing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Um, speaking of what we’re gonna do, I, uh, kinda decided on what I’m gonna study at the University.”

“That’s great, Buck!” he said, and Bucky nodded, ducking his head down so his hair fell to cover his face.

“You know how T’Challa mentioned sending social workers? Uh, that’s—that’s kind of what I want do. Social work, I mean. Like, with kids like these, and people who come here for help, refugees and asylum seekers. People kinda like me, I guess. I don’t, uh. Who knows if I’ll be any good at it? But. I felt safe here, for the first time in a really long time. I want to help other people feel that way too. If I’m needed for a fight, I’ll go, but I think—I think this is what I want to do,” finished Bucky, then let out a harsh and shaky breath, as if he was winded by his speech.

Steve stopped dead in his tracks. He thought he’d understood the dimensions of his love for Bucky, how deep it went, how long. And yet now he discovered a new one, love and adoration expanding and expanding, as if his heart was bigger than he’d ever known or hoped it could be, and growing bigger every moment. How the hell was it possible to love someone this much, he wondered, and only barely suppressed a wild laugh.

“Steve?” and Steve couldn’t make out Bucky’s expression in the dark, but he sounded too much like that last moment before Thanos snapped his fingers, when fear had begun to color Bucky’s voice. Steve didn’t want there to ever be fear in Bucky’s voice when he said Steve’s name.

“I think you’ll be amazing at it,” he said, and okay, it was time, Steve was done with soon. Soon was now. “I’m done with the fight, Buck. For good. I know I was an asshole earlier tonight with the wanting to throw myself into it again, but—this thing, being an official advocate or whatever, that’s gonna be it for me. No more wars, no more battles. I promise, I’m done.”

“Alright, I hear you,” said Bucky.

“And you believe me? That I’m done, and I’m staying, do you really believe me, Buck, because—”

And then, with what had to be super soldier speed because Steve was pretty sure he hadn’t even seen Bucky move, Bucky kissed him. It was firm and closed mouth, and over so fast it was like Bucky had darted close to get a jab in past Steve’s guard, but it was very definitely a kiss.

“I believe you,” said Bucky, close enough now that even in the dark Steve could see his wide eyes, his expression wavering somewhere between terror and exhilaration.

“You didn’t let me finish,” said Steve faintly, and Bucky kissed him again, properly now, a real closing credits kind of kiss, deep and long and knee-weakening. It seemed impossible that it had taken the better part of a century for Steve to learn the softness of Bucky’s lips, to taste him, to know he kissed with raw devotion. He wanted to spend the next century learning more.

“Finish when we get back home,” said Bucky, then grabbed his hand and led him there.

* * *

They didn’t run home, but it was a near thing. They stumbled and tripped their way into the cottage, clumsy with kissing, until they made it to the bedroom and fell onto the bed.

“What I was gonna say—” said Steve, gasping, as Bucky kept kissing him and kissing him, on his lips, and his jaw, and his neck, heat blooming in the wake of his lips. “Buck, wait, this is _important_.”

“Okay, okay,” said Bucky, delightfully breathless. He sat back on his heels, still straddling Steve, but keeping his weight off of him. Steve flailed himself upright and let Bucky shove some pillows behind his back, so they were even with each other. “So, what were you gonna say.”

“I love you.”

He’d worried that the confession would feel like the opening of a fatal wound, his heartsblood spilling out, and nothing to staunch the bleeding. Looking at Bucky now, he didn’t know how he could have ever thought that. His face was soft and bare with wonder and joy, nothing hidden, not his love or his fear or his hope. This confession wasn’t like a wounding at all; it was the desperate relief and exhilaration of rising up from deep water towards the light, and finally, finally taking the breath his lungs had ached so long for.

“I kinda thought you were gonna propose,” rasped Bucky, then immediately flushed bright red and closed his eyes in mortification. Steve laughed in sheer delight. “That is—that was kinda my crazy plan, because it turns out everyone here thinks we’re already married, and—anyway. I love you. Obviously.”

Steve had to kiss him after that, deep and long like he was breathing him in, and Bucky leaned into him, perfectly heavy, perfectly real. He didn’t know what came next, hadn’t let himself think of it, but Bucky’s lips and hands made him want those things he had until now only let himself imagine with dreamy vagueness. His cock was hard, and he could feel Bucky too; it made him bold enough to push his hips up against Bucky, seeking pressure and friction. Bucky moaned into Steve’s mouth, Steve’s new favorite sound.

“Why are we wearing clothes,” Steve demanded when their lips separated.

“I dunno,” mumbled Bucky, and his eyes went dark with renewed focus. “Let me,” he said, and started pulling Steve’s shirt off.

There was some ungraceful wriggling and tugging then, as Bucky divested Steve of his pants and Steve went for Bucky’s shirt. Getting his hands on all the smooth and warm skin this revealed distracted him from his own nakedness at first, but not for long. Bucky stripped him down to bare skin, and then he just looked, with the full force and focus of his attention. Steve was too keenly aware of his own boniness, how slight he was compared to Bucky.

“Thinking we shoulda done this the first time back when I still had the serum,” said Steve, and he wasn’t quite joking.

“No,” said Bucky, vehement. “You’re—there was never anything wrong with you just like this, not to me. Let me—let me show you?”

Steve shuddered and nodded. “Okay.”

Bucky kissed him again, as if in thanks, and then he kissed the pulsepoint on Steve’s neck where his blood rushed and beat with giddy speed, and then he kissed the points of Steve’s collarbones. Steve hadn’t ever paid much attention to his collarbones before, but under Bucky’s lips, the skin there sent sensation rocketing through him. Bucky kept going, down Steve’s sternum, to his nipples, where he licked too, and made Steve make a noise he hadn’t thought could come out of him, then down to the trembling hollows under his ribs. If Bucky’s hands hadn’t been on his sides, like warm anchors, Steve thought he might have trembled apart. As it was, he was distantly aware that he was nearly panting, and he wanted—he wanted—

He wanted whatever Bucky would give him.

“Shh, shh,” Bucky soothed. “I got you,” he murmured into the tender skin above Steve’s navel, so close to Steve’s cock that he moaned.

Bucky’s hands moved down to his hips, cradling them with a fraction of the strength Steve knew he was capable of, and then he looked up at Steve, and the look in his eyes was entirely new: steady and reverent. His lips were reverent too when he kissed Steve’s cock, featherlight and almost tentative.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah, please, Buck—”

And then Bucky took Steve’s cock in his mouth, and nothing in his aching dreams could have ever prepared Steve for that. His mouth was hot, and his tongue was as careful and relentless as his focus. It was too much and not enough, and when Steve’s hips thrust helplessly into Bucky’s mouth, Bucky took it with a humming moan of pleasure that Steve felt reverberate through him.

Time went funny, for Steve, but he didn’t think he lasted long, as these things went, before he had to tell Bucky, “I’m gonna, Buck, please—”

Bucky didn’t pull away though, just sucked harder until Steve spilled into his mouth, shaking. Steve was still floating on the high of it when Bucky cupped Steve’s face in his hands, and looked him in the eye.

“Do you get it? I want _you,_ ” he said, and his voice was hoarse and shaking, and Steve felt it again, that impossible expansion, evidently infinite.

“Yeah, I get it,” Steve said, and willed his hands steady to map the new to him territories of Bucky’s body, the cut of his hips, the lean muscles of his thighs, the dip and swell of his back and ass. Bucky was so hard his cock was leaking already, and then Steve touched him there too, the hot and soft skin, the weight and girth of him.

Steve wasn’t exactly experienced, here, but he figured he couldn’t fuck this up, having extensive experience with his own cock and all. And yet, when he stroked along Bucky’s length, even this familiar act felt thrillingly new, because this was Bucky arching into him, these were Bucky’s hands clutching desperately at Steve, this was Bucky begging him to go faster. This was Bucky, giving him the gift of his desire.

He slowed down, wanting to savor it, memorize it: the slack and desperate look on his face, the heat of his cock in Steve’s hand. He took Bucky’s pleading moan and turned it into a kiss, sloppy and open-mouthed.

“Steve, get a move on, please—”

“Yeah? I can do this all night, Buck,” Steve said, and Bucky laughed, breathless, and looked up at Steve, flushed and smiling, his eyes the clear and sweet blue of a calm ocean. He was the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen, a miracle on miracle, here at their fourth chance at happiness.

“Take a look outside, sweetheart, it’s dawn,” he said, and came long and shaking in Steve’s hand.

* * *

Bucky had been right, it was dawn. Light crept across their bedroom, inch by inch, into golden brightness, but Steve only noticed it when it fell on Bucky’s bare and gleaming skin, on them, taking them into a new and long-awaited day.

Steve had often wondered what life would be like, after all the wars, and he’d wondered it with dread and hope, desire and disbelief, worry and want. Now he knew. It was Bucky, happy and safe, and a way forward into a future they’d make together.


End file.
